We more or less cheated on this dive. Jeff and Susan
wanted to see some seahorses and we were told that there
were some at Oil Slick Leap. When we got there, there was
another boat on the site, so we had to go to the next bouy,
Kalli's Reef. This is a new location to honor Kalli De
Meyer, the Marine Park Manager.

If we were going to make it from Kalli's Reef to Oil Slick
we were going to have to make good progress underwater.
The only real problem was that there was so *much* to see
along the way it was hard not to stop and look.

I arrived at Oil Slick with 1750 lbs of air in my tank.
Jeff and I surfaced to get our bearings. We were told
that the sea horses were hiding in the bases of dark coral
just below the small bush just south of the leap itsself.
When I asked Jeff how much air he had left, his reply was
"plenty." I was a little surprised by this, but he had
split fins and mine are an ancient pair of skindiving
blade fins. We lined up on our mark and dived to begin
our search. I checked Susan's (Gill GIrl) air and she was
fine also.

It turned out that another pair of divers was looking at
dark corals just beneath us. We began our search, but
there wasn't much time until the 1500 lb turnaround
point. I was about to give up when a solo diver pointed
to some corals. I looked and there wrapped in the fans
were some seahorses. Not only was it amazing that we
found the seahorses, but that this other diver seemed to
know exactly what we were searching for.

We stayed a few minutes past the turnaround alarm looking
at the seahorses and then began our journey to Kalli's
Reef. We swam steadily along the crest of the reef. I
kept a close eye on my 2 partners because I knew that all
of us had to be relatively low on air. I was ahead of
them and had just checked them when I felt a tugging on my
fin. At first I thought that it was one of my partners
out of air. We were only half of the distance back to the
boat.

When I looked it turned out to be the solo diver who had
shown us the seahorses. He had been swimming below us and
now he was pointing to some coral. We looked and saw
nothing. Our air situation was critical so I signaled him
a thanks and we turned back to the boat.

When I approached the mooring bouy, I had just under 1000
lbs. Even a small current can make a big difference in
air consumption on a swim like that. I checked
Gill Girl's gague and she had just over 1000 lbs. Jeff
was headed to the surface. His tank was buckled[1] in
from sucking it absolutely dry. Susan offered him her
octopus, but he declined.

It turned out that the solo diver was Mervin, the captain
of the boat moored on the Oil Slick mooring bouy. At
first we thought that he had confused us with divers off
his boat, but when we went by, it turned out that he was
doing a custom dive with only two divers so he *knew* that
we weren't *his* divers, yet he helped us anyhow.

Mervin works out of Buddy Dive, so we went there the next
day to meet him. He just happens to be a great person who
loves the underwater world of Bonaire and wants to share
it with everyone he sees. He was surprised that we swam
down from Kalli's Reef though. He thought we had done Oil
Slick as a shore dive.

--
john.

[1] Not really buckled, but he was totally out of air.

John, great report. Nice to know that there are still nice folks under the sea:-) I like the sea horse story, I hope we see these when we are there. Maybe we will look Mervin up while we are there.

John it was a great report and very good to hear that Mervin is still at it. My wife and I used Buddy Dive 6 years ago and Mervin was our master diver. Your right, he is a great person. Is Kallis reef north or south of oil slick leap?

Kalli's reef is north of Oil Slick
Leap. Although we didn't spend much
time there, it was great dive in it's
own right.

--
john.