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Mar 7, 10 Comments (0)
 Bonaire Reef Scene Good evening friends, here’s yet another beautiful reef scene from Bonaire. This was taken on the day I went with Scott and his group on a boat to the tiny island of Klein Bonaire. The dive site is called Leonora’s Reef named after one of the many girlfriends of Captain Don who named almost all the sites in Bonaire. This spectacular sponge cluster was found almost directly under the boat and if you visit there sometime soon there is a giant seahorse 20 feet away at the same depth to the left, see if you can find him! I highly recommend any new readers taking a boat trip or two to Klein Bonaire it’s just filled with great stuff. These sponges here are very plain looking underwater, if fact they are green but hit them with some flash and “Bammo” you have instant color. A big thanks again to Scott and Tammi for setting me up with this boat dive, I had a blast and took so many great reef scene photos and some even have Scott in the background.
Today was crazy busy. I first took the dogs to Saint Joris for some trail building and playing in the sand and water and after two hours I carted two very muddy and sandy dogs back home. I then raced over to a friends house to help them paint the inside of their new house. The walls were painted pink and our job was to try and cover that terrible color, it took layer after layer of white to achieve this goal but slowly it got done. I then went back home at around 3:00 and met Aimee who got off work early. Her and I took off on a fun one hour bike ride, half on the road and half on the dirt, it was a lot of fun. We are now sitting here watching the last episode of Life on Mars and then off to bed.
Hope you all had a wonderful weekend, Barry
Mar 6, 10 Comments (0)
 Rufo Hi friends, just a very quick note tonight to just say hi and all is well. I received a note a week ago from a friend on the list asking about our Dolphin Academy mascot Rufo so here he is. I shot this yesterday as he hung from one of the many palm fronds in his personal little palm tree. Rufo is so funny to watch and is a super big hit with the guests each day. He will hang completely upside down holding on with just one leg and then like a circus performer he will swing his body and pop his head up thru the palm fronds as you see here as if to say “here I am”, we love him!
I went for a deep dive today down to 102 feet with a friend from work out in front of the aquarium in search of new sponges. We found a great new area that was just loaded with goodies, will take Aimee back there on her next day off to help me search for photo worthy shots. After work I went on a nice fast hour and a half mountain bike ride in the wilds of Curacao. The trails are so dusty and loose now, man does the Caribbean ever need rain!!
That’s about it, talk to you tomorrow, Barry
Mar 5, 10 Comments (0)
 Bonaire, Red Beryl Good evening from Hotville!! Man-o-man today was a warm one!! With very little wind a blowing this place can get very uncomfortable quick! Aimee and some of the other trainers went for a nice ocean swim today in-between training sessions to cool off and I hid in the air-co all day. My dearest is training for a triathlon that she will compete in on the 28th, I will of course be helping her and taking photos, cool huh?? I finally got gas in the car but I heard that the strike is not over so I really filled it up!!
Here’s another Bonaire photo that when I saw it I thought, “dang that would make a great cover” it was picture perfect! This is a beautiful school of Mahogany Snappers hanging out in the safety of the gorgonian forest. This was taken at a dive site called “Red Beryl” which is the 7th dive site past the salt mines, I highly recommend it!! I have other great shots of this area still on their way to you and in one of the photos I found a tall gorgonian on top of the reef and all these fish were under this one single soft coral, it was truly beautiful!! I again must thank Sal and Patty for taking me here, I kind of told them what I was looking for and they knew just the right spot, it’s great to have friends! I did find out once again just how hard it was to shoot silver reflective fish as the flash can easily bounce off their shiny bodies so I kept back further than normal this time and for the most part it seemed to work. I don’t think this was very deep because we were on the way back from the dive, I am guessing around 30 feet and as usual the Bonaire waters were just spectacular. I’m having diving with-draws these past few days, I sure wish I was back there, the gang at Wannadive and my new friends made leaving very difficult.
That’s about it, I smell pizza!! Hope you all are well, thanks for all the notes, till tomorrow, Barry
Mar 4, 10 Comments (0)
 Bonaire frogfish Hi friends, being that we have no gas in the car we are having to stick very close to home today. I did take off on a brief sight seeing tour to see if the gas stations were in fact really OUT of gas and sure enough it’s really gone!! It was easy to see while out that the streets were very empty for a Thursday afternoon, I guess I was not the only one low on fuel. I did manage to pick up some more food but then went directly home to save what little gas we have left. Good times!!
Aimee and I took the dogs over to the trails behind the aquarium this morning, she ran and I rode the bike. This was the first time since we have been here that I have ever seen my woman run and I must say she’s pretty fast and in great shape. We did a three and a half mile loop and some parts of the trail it was difficult to keep up to my bionic woman, she keeps a fast pace up the hills while I slow down quite a bit. I really wish it would rain, it sometimes looks like it going to but time after time we get nothing!
Here’s a beautiful Longlure Frogfish that my buddy Sal took me to see on the last dive I did Tuesday morning. This incredible creature was just sitting there on top of those sponges with his little fishing lure out trying to catch his morning breakfast. We found this beauty at my favorite dive site in Bonaire in front of Wannadive at Eden Beach, it’s one of the best places I found for so many cool creatures. My friend Sal has the eyes of a hawk underwater and proved over and over that he was the hands down fish finding master of the Caribbean, need to get him to come here to help me find stuff! I laid on the sand watching this guy for quite awhile by myself, he’s so fascinating especially when he wiggles his little white fishing lure trying to attract some poor unsuspecting fish which he’s very, very good at!!!
Aimee has been watching a series my mom sent to us called “Life on Mars” all day and I am going to take off on a bike ride in an hour. Talk to you all tomorrow, Barry
Mar 3, 10 Comments (0)
 Bonaire Reef Scene Good evening from HOT Curacao!! Still no rain and the desert is getting as dry as a bone and is quickly turning into a dust bowl! After work this evening I gave Aimee a much needed break and took the dogs out for a quick walk and really got a first hand look at how dry our little island is and it’s so early in the year for this? It was a bit strange being back at work today I kept looking around for my dive gear but remembered it was all at home airing out still. We had some kind of a strike going on at the oil refinery and they were telling folks to get gas because no one knew how long it would last? So Aimee took the car and headed out to fill up but found out immediately she couldn’t even get close to the station as there was a line of cars waiting a mile long so she just went back home. And because of no gas that means other services are down as well like making breads and stuff you don’t even think of so like a good girl she raced to the store and joined in the madness of everyone stocking up. Our electricity was off for most of the afternoon but came back on before I got home so that is good although no telling how long it will last so if you don’t hear from us that’s why! Ahh the joys of living on a Caribbean island!
Here’s another shot from O’l Blue in Bonaire. This a big beautiful Schoolmaster (Snapper) just hanging out in front of a gorgonian with his head into the current. I saw these fish everywhere on this trip, sometimes by themselves as seen here and many times in small schools. The first dive we did was by far the clearest dive we did the whole trip you could see for a hundred feet in every direction, it was great. Again thanks to Sal, Patty, Scott and Tammi for constantly waiting on me while I ever so quietly moved in for shot after shot, it takes a bunch of patience to get a nice picture with fish in it sometimes. I have so many fun shots from this trip and will be sending them out one by one, so again stay tuned for more.
Need to close early just in case the power goes out again, see you tomorrow, Barry
Mar 2, 10 Comments (0)
 Sal Good evening readers I am back!!! What a GREAT trip to say the least, the folks in Bonaire ROCK!! Our friends Sal and Patty who spend 3 months a year in Bonaire met me at the airport and delivered me to the folks at Wannadive where I then stayed for the next 6 days. Sal and Patty picked me up from the Wannadive Hotel every morning and off we went to some new fun dive spot in search of new creatures and coral reef scenes. I was also lucky enough to have friends from Rapid City diving here at this time as well. Their names are Scott and Tammi and they are the owners of Black Hills Scuba, please stop in and say hi to them for me they are such great people! Everyone I met or ran into was so nice and everyone went out of their way to make me feel at home, so to all of you, thanks for everything!!! So the first morning Sal, Patty and I met Scott and Tammi at the Wannadive shop at Eden Beach and off we went up the coast for our first dive together. The dive spot was called O’l Blue and within minutes of arriving we spotted a giant pod of Offshore Bottlenose Dolphins swimming right out over the dive spot headed towards Bonaire at a very slow pace. Upon seeing this we all quickly got our gear on and raced to the water but by the time we all got out and under they had already passed. Even though we didn’t see dolphins it was a really beautiful dive. This is Sal floating over a beautiful cluster of tube sponges which this spot had plenty of, I kind of just raced from one to the next like a man on a mission. Bonaire has such beautiful diving! Almost every spot we went to we saw big fish and lots of them, something Curacao has very little of as our reef’s are fished hard! I think it’s safe to say we all had a wonderful dive here, Scott shot video and Tammi did a little posing for me over a few gorgonians, what else could a man ask for?
Well more tomorrow, it’s late and I am beat! Again thank you all, Barry
Mar 1, 10 Comments (0)
 Secretary Blenny Hi everyone. Last e-mail from me. Barry should return tomorrow night. I just spoke to him and he has had a wonderful time with everyone just being great to him. He was currently over at our friend’s house having a nice home-cooked meal. They did 3 dives today and tomorrow he heads out for another dive before heading home. We are missing him here!
Today’s photo is of a secretary blenny. This type of blenny finds its home in coral heads (many times brain coral) or in old, forgotten feather worm holes, which is what this one found. Blennies are tiny creatures and many times the only part you see is their head as they bravely shoot in and out of their safe little homes in search of a quick snack before darting in once again tail first. They have a cute little duck-billed face and eat mostly plankton as it floats by. In order to see them a diver needs to just settle down at a coral head and let the blenny get used to you and curiosity usually draws them out. You can see his size by looking at the coral polyps he is just above. They are much smaller than your pinkie finger.
Well I hope the Monday began a good week for all. Thanks for all the fun replies to my blog, I appreciate it a ton. See you later…
Aimee
Feb 28, 10 Comments (0)
 Photographing a Red Heart Urchin Hello all. I hope and believe everyone had a good weekend. Our friends on the daily blog range from hot places, in southern Texas all the way up to the New York area, where they are piled thick with snow and all these storms, so everyone either stay cool or warm. Today’s photo is of our friend Mark from the Dive Bus, who is photographing a heart urchin. Mark and Barry do lots of diving together. When they are around each other it is pretty crazy, what a pair! As you recall it was Mark and another friend that Barry photographed jumping out of the helicopter! He is always up for a good time.
Now this is a heart urchin, and as you can see, it is covered with tons of tiny little spines. It uses these spines to help dig under the sand, where it is usually buried. They actually spend most of their time buried under the sand where they feed on organic material. There are actually quite a lot of heart urchins in most dive spots that we go to, but because they are usually hidden, the average diver seldom sees them. The most likely time to find a heart urchin is at night when they will more often come above the sand. Heart urchins, as their name implies are related to the sea urchins and the sand dollars, which most people are familiar with.
Ok, have a great week. Hope you enjoy.
Aimee
Feb 27, 10 Comments (0)
 Juvenile Angelfish Hello everyone. I hope your Saturday was a nice one and that you have a good Sunday to follow. Today’s photo is of a juvenile Queen Angelfish. All angelfish have this distinctive shape, even when they are young, but with many fish, this one included, the juvenile colors can be different from the adult colors. Only the juveniles have these distinctive bright blue stripes. As the fish matures they will loose these stripes and have more of an overall yellow/blue/turquoise color. As they mature also you will get the classic “crown” for which the Queen Angelfish gets its name. If you look closely you can see the beginnings of it even now. As adults they are quite shy fish and usually hide behind a rock before a diver can get very close. But, if you are patient and just relax and wait, they are also curious and usually begin to peek around that rock to see who is looking at them. Well, the juveniles are even more skittish and it takes a tremendous amount of patience to get a nice photo. Luckily my husband has plenty of patience….
Hope you enjoy. Have a great weekend.
Aimee
Feb 26, 10 Comments (0)
 Christmas Tree Worm Good evening everyone. Do your days pass as quickly as mine do? It seems just minutes ago that it was morning! Time really flies some days, especially down here. It is super hot in Curacao right now, with not much of a breeze and pretty flat water. But, the good news is that the current is going in the correct direction and we are not getting any bad water from the harbor. Curacao without our trade winds just becomes stagnant. The breeze is really a blessing!
Well I did hear from Barry this evening and he is having the time of his life! He found several new species of fish that he has not photographed before so that is super exciting. It is hard to believe, but true that some species of fish, corals etc do not just “jump” from island to island. That means that you can find some very different photo subjects, and a trip to our neighbor, Bonaire, is well worth it!
The photo below is a wonderful one of a Christmas tree worm with a brilliant red sponge background. It is really amazing that even though you may have the same subject, the background can just make it outstanding. For those of you who have seen the movie “Avatar”, you may recall in the beginning that in the jungle there were huge “plants” that when the main character touched them they immediately withdrew into themselves. Well, this is exactly what the Christmas tree worms do! I heard through an interview that the director of the film is a big diver, and you can really see that influence! So, everyone have a great weekend! Stay safe.
Aimee
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