photography – Page 2 – Snorkeling Adventures

Bonaire 2025. Salt Pier

April 23, 2025May 22, 2025Tagged blog, Bonaire, coral reef, photography, snorkel, snorkeling, sponges, travelLeave a comment

I’ve been lucky when abroad to find other snorkelers. This visit, I met someone from the Netherlands who suggested Salt Pier, where the Cargill Salt ships dock to be loaded up with salt from the saltwater flats. If a ship is docked or due, they will close the area around the pier for the day. In general, Salt Pier is quite deep and basically open ocean, which means that when it is windy, you will feel it. When I went, I think the wind was 19-20 mph with gusts, so besides the choppy swim, the clarity was significantly reduced for photography.

I absolutely love the area around the pier pilings, the ghostly shapes in the depths and the wildly colorful sponges on the close pilings. Salt Pier is often mentioned as a place to see turtles, but I had never seen mentioned the marvelously diverse amount of sponges growing on the giant pilings.

It is an area known for turtles, interestingly. I’m not sure what draws them there over other places. I saw a very small one as well as a larger tagged one on this run.

Also because of the deeper water, I usually see a barracuda as well as larger schools of larger fish, sheltering under the pilings. This picture isn’t great, but you can see the barracuda swimming through. Though numerous sources suggest a snorkeler has nothing to fear, unless wearing shiny bits of metal, I try to keep a respectful distance.

Unfortunately, most of the shallow areas have experienced a lot of coral die off. To the right of the pier is an area that used to be covered with staghorn coral. I was happy to see there was some surviving, but as you can tell, it is struggling.

Salt Pier also has a LOT of divers. My friend and I had fun playing in their bubbles as they swam underneath us at the pilings.

Getting out was a challenge, as waves had picked up. I got shoved into the limestone boulders, and was extremely glad of my full-body rashguard from Waterlust. Only my hands and feet got scraped. That was probably the worst scrape-up I’ve ever had.

Hello World!

April 21, 2025May 14, 2025Tagged blog, photography, snorkel, snorkeling, travelLeave a comment

I’m a devoted snorkeler and swimmer who has finally found a way to share some of my pictures. I have hung out on Bonaire and Curacao Facebook and Reddit groups, particularly for snorkeling, and now that I’ve been to both a few times, I find myself sharing some of the same thoughts. How much simpler to share in one place! Plus, pictures!

One of the most challenging things about snorkel trips is how reports vary. I think this is–of course–due to our perspective. I’ve only been tropical snorkeling since about 2018 or so, so my perspective is very different from people that have been doing it much longer. There are a number of reliable studies that show clear, marked decline in Caribbean coral, for various environmental and epidemiological reasons. I’ve learned for many people, they go on cruise ship type excursions and are interested in megafauna (turtles) or places with ‘lots of fishes,’ so their reports differ quite a bit from the ones I’m always looking for. I’m a swimmer, freediver, and an amateur biologist and photographer, so I’m always looking for a more diverse experience.

I’ve also travelled to the Florida Keys and St. John, USVI, finding both kind of a bust for snorkeling (although I did run into a pod of manatees heading to a bridge channel, which was freaking amazing!) Interestingly, for two of those three trips, I dealt with Tropical Storms/predicted hurricanes (perhaps another blog post), so I’d be willing to give them another chance. That is one of the joys of Bonaire and Curacao, in that they lie outside the hurricane belt.

I will probably never scuba dive, because after one of my Florida snorkeling trips, I developed a deep vein thrombosis that turned into blood clots in my both my lungs. I recovered just fine and my lungs and heart are healthy, but there are so many physiological stresses that go into diving that I don’t feel like pushing it. Reports that are coming out of Hawai’i about flash pulmonary edema in snorkelers–and that have probably happened in Bonaire and Curacao as well, judging by the occasional articles of divers and snorkelers dying–should remind us that us air-breathing humans can’t take our physiology for granted, particularly when coupled with air travel.

Anyways, I welcome feedback about the site. I was using the ‘slideshow’ format for some of these pictures, but I discovered it wouldn’t work on my mobile version of WordPress, so I’ve moved away from that feature, though I liked it as a way to incorporate a group of pictures under a theme.

As I’ve snorkeled more, I’m getting more comfortable with taking videos to give a full-reef feel, although I am definitely not skilled in video editing. So I’m open to requests there as well.

I’m also open to hearing about your experiences in the areas, or in general. I love learning!

a peacock flounder signaling romance on its mind

Bonaire Feb. 2025, Oil Slick and Bari Reef

April 21, 2025June 17, 2025Tagged blog, Bonaire, coral reef, photography, snorkel, snorkeling, travelLeave a comment

A week-long, solo adventure in January. I stayed north of the main town, a few minutes walk from Oil Slick dive site. Unfortunately, it was quite windy, 18-21 mph the week I was there. A lot of the dive sites are unprotected from winds, including Oil Slick. It is about 8-10 feet deep right off the platform, so you have to be comfortable with a ladder and with putting on gear while treading water.

One of the main reasons I wanted to scout around Oil Slick is that I donated money to Reef Renewal Bonaire create a coral tree. In the past year, Reef Renewal has been growing the organization and exponentially increasing their efforts to outplant coral through in-ocean propagation. In the old days, they created floating ‘trees’ often made of PVC. Most trees focused on staghorn coral, a type that is friendly to this propagation and is often decimated by storm events. I don’t think I found my tree, but you can see what they look like. It looks like RRB is giving brain or maze corals a try.

Oil Slick is really too deep for enjoyable snorkeling, but had a lovely bottom with large boulder corals and giant sea plumes. In many of the pictures you can see how the coral is struggling with disease, no longer a uniform color. Due to the wave action, there’s lots of particles blown up in the water even though there is relatively little exposed sandy bottom.

First stop for me is always Andrea I, historically one of my favorite areas to snorkel on Bonaire. Unfortunately, Stony Coral disease has continued to make inroads on the larger boulders and to my surprise, the fire coral as well. When I first arrived on Bonaire, I was surprised by how much fire coral there was. On my last visit, it seemed to be remaining healthy, but on this one, I saw definite die-off along with bleaching heat-stress. I think there is significantly more algae growth. It still has a lot of parrotfish and damselfish which love to eat algae. Sea urchins also seem to be making a comeback, which is probably good as they are algae eaters as well.

There was decent fish diversity, with a number of different parrotfish–yellowtail, redtail, Queen, princess, and rainbow–damsels, a few spotted trunkfish and orange spotted filefish, lots of tangs, sergeants, grunts, and goatfish, a few yellowfin mojarra and bar jacks, and even a pair of banded butterflies, a Bermuda chub and a scorpionfish.

The next day I stopped into town and my now-favorite dive shop, Private Divers Bonaire, and picked up some weights. They are incredibly easy to deal with and rely on a delightfully old-fashioned honor system. Weights help me freedive. More on that in a separate post, but hopefully you’ll notice improvement in photos. I certainly did.

Since I was in town, I went to Isidel Beach Park, a new park with a disability ramp into the water to check it out. I think the area in front used to be called Bari Reef, which also extends to the front of Chogogo Beach Resort. Chogogo is a monstrous money-making resort that did not do just stewardship towards beach construction. They trucked in tons of sand for a sandy beach, and promptly lost it to the first storm that went through. The water quality shows here, with poor visibility in photos with any distance. However, there’s an artificial reef to the left of the walking ramp that attracts a nice variety of fish. I’ve noticed structures of any sort provide a basis for corals, sponges and algae to cling to, which in turn attracts more fish.

Actually, I found the fish hilarious. They were definitely accustomed to snorkelers, and acted more curious than frighted. I acquired a school of palometas that seemed confused by me being below them.