Scuba Bonaire: Oil Pan, August 6th

The morning after our dives on Klein, we got up to go diving with Sally, to continue exploring her favorite sites. Oil Pan is down in the south, and also sometimes called Yellow Hut; both names refer to landmarks that are no longer present. On the way down, we passed by Margate and saw it absolutely packed with cars: word of the sharks had gotten out.

Sally has probably done more dives on Bonaire than either of us has in our lives, so when we go with her we see great stuff. Here’s an especially big Giant Anemone, with a nice collection of pederson cleaner and squat anemone shrimps.

Here’s Sally trying to show Jazz a tiny crinoid shrimp, hiding in the arms of a crinoid. We did not see the shrimp, but Jazz did get a sting on the hand from getting too close. (Also that’s not a red flashlight; red light just doesn’t make it very far through seawater, so a white light looks very red by comparison.)

Sally taught us that it’s worth looking down the necks of sponges with a flashlight; better lights immediately went on our next-Amazon-order wishlist.

Andrew, meanwhile, got excited about finding an old bottle, thinking of the marine archeology lecture we’d been to in Statia. Jazz and Sally were nonplussed.

Float float drift drift.

Other fun things: the giant lips on these two smooth trunkfish, and the purple tips on this giant anemone.

A brain coral head had been flipped in a recent reversal. We righted it, and out the bottom slithered a couple of brittle sea stars. Right, here’s an especially tight grouping of flamingo tongues.

On the way out of the water, we found a fire coral hiding a soapfish with an absolutely fantastic expression. Also in the fire coral, a fire worm (no relation).

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