The end of the season

HEADS UP!

We are out of the water and packing up before heading home.

I bid you adieu with sea fans waving goodbye from Bonaire.

Here's looking at you

Today's post is a hodge podge of photos.  Most feature eyes.  These were taken at depths from 15 feet to about 45 feet.

Stareye hermit crab

Garden eel

Queen conch

Striped parrotfish with algae mustache

Yellow tube sponge (or muppet on vacation)

Creatures of the night -- part 2

On night dives, a number of species appear that are completely hidden during the day.  Tube-dwelling anemones are nocturnal.  At night, they extend their tentacles out of their tubes in the sand.  If disturbed by a bright diver's light, they retract back into their tubes.

Lobsters forage at night.  This spiny lobster was out on a sandy area near the reef.

The next photo is a mystery to me.  I showed it to a local naturalist friend, and he didn't know what it was.  Four arms were sticking out of the sand, something like an anemone, but the spine-covered arms were fewer and structurally quite different from anemone tentacles.  My closest guess is a brittle star, with one arm and its central disc buried in the sand.  Anyone knowing the identity of this animal, please post a comment, and I will add the ID to this post.  The arms were about 3.5 inches long.  All photos were taken at a depth of about 20 feet.

Morays

We encounter several species of moray eels on our dives.  The most common is the spotted moray, which grows up to 4 feet, although the ones that we see are often no longer than 3 feet.  Morays generally forage at night, and hide during the day.  Occasionally they are out foraging or looking for a new hiding spot during the day.

Spotted moray with scarlet-striped cleaning shrimp

Striped moray with golden coral shrimp

We often see goldentail morays as well.  They are smaller, with a maximum length of 2 feet.

Goldentail moray

Chain morays are less frequent, but perhaps the most attractive of the local morays.  They grow up to 2.5 feet.

Chain moray

We also occasionally see green morays (the largest, at up to 8 ft.) and purplemouth morays that get up to 4 ft., sorry, no photos of them.

Queen triggerfish

It has been a couple of years since I have seen a queen triggerfish here in Bonaire.  They always seemed to be hanging around the bottom of reefs, but today I asked directions to find a juvenile queen triggerfish.  It was only about 2 inches long (compared to a maximum of 2 feet for adults).  And it was in 15 feet of water.

This gorgeous little fish puts up with a lot of photographers.  I shut off the flash, because there was so much light from the sand and the shallow water.

Cherubfish

On some dives, we encounter small populations of cherubfish darting in and out of hiding places in coral rubble or other reef structures. Their size ranges from 1.5 to 3 inches.  As unlikely as it may sound, this tiny fish is an angelfish.  They are always a delight to watch, but difficult to photograph.

The photos were taken at about 40 feet and 85 feet.  Although 85 feet is as deep as I go to find these fish, they have been recorded down to 350 feet.

Creatures of the night -- part 1

During the day we encounter lots of fish that are hanging out in dark recesses of the reef.  Many of these fish are red and have really big eyes.  These fish leave their daytime hiding places when it is dark.  At night, they move into the water column where we see their eyes, which reflect light, for quite a distance.

The glasseye snapper and various squirrelfish are nocturnal hunters. These fish grow to about 12 inches, but the ones in the photos below were 8 to 10 inches.  The photos were taken at depths of 35 to 50 feet.

Glasseye snapper

One of the squirrelfish species

Longspine squirrelfish

Black margate

The black margate belongs to the grunt family.  They can grow to 2 feet, but the fish featured here in the photos below were 1 to 1.5 feet long.  This season, we have generally only seen one or two on a dive, but today we located an aggregation of them, just drifting along, near the bottom in about 30 feet of water.  They are sort of shy, and tend to swim away when approached. It's always nice to see large numbers of sizable fish.

Trumpetfish

On virtually every dive, we see trumpetfish.  They are voracious predators, and often try to sneak up on unsuspecting prey by hiding behind herbivorous fish that pose no threat to the prey.  They are long, thin fish, with a very long (trumpet-like) snout.  They frequently hide in rope sponges and soft corals.  They often drift in a head-down, tail-up position. They are really interesting fish to watch, and they are able to change color (sometimes just the snout is another color).  Their colors range from reddish brown to blue-black, to yellow, or blue, with lots of variations in between.

They can grow up to 3 feet long, but the ones in the photos below were between 1.5 and 2 feet long.  These photos were taken at depths of 25 to 45 feet.

Two frogfish within a foot

Frogfish are often hard to find, and even if you know that they are there, it is much easier to find them when someone else puts you in exactly the right place, and points them out.  After looking for this pair for about 15 minutes, and even knowing what color they were, we were unable to find them. We had to wait for a friend to arrive and point them out.  They were red and green.

Both frogfish are in this photo, can you find them?

The red one, to the right of the top photo.

Another view of the red one.

The green one, to the left in the top photo.

Another view of the green one.