I picked the dive spots for this morning because I had two tasks that I had on my radar to try to accomplish. First, an Instagram acquaintance (SV The Kraken) had seen a seahorse at one of the dive sites a few days prior.  Since seahorses are kind of the unicorns of Bonaire, so, I was pretty excited to try to lay my eyes on one.  Second, I wanted to find the exact spot that the Explore.org webcam was placed so that when I’m watching it at home, I have a point of reference because I’ve been there.

After breakfast, we went to get our dive gear from the gear room and discovered that someone had taken my pufferfish reg holder off my BCD between when I was in the gear room yesterday afternoon and when we got there this morning. How disappointing! Good thing they’re available on Amazon now, at a fraction of the cost we originally paid for it!

First dive stop for the day was Bonaire’s dive site #30, Bari Reef so that we could get to seahorse hunting. According to data from the REEF (Reef Environmental Education Foundation), Bari Reef contains the largest variety in species in the Caribbean, so, we were pretty excited to check it out. While we didn’t see a seahorse, we did get to see two squid flitting about. Pretty sweet, as it was the first time I saw squid in the wild.

Next on our list was Bonaire’s dive site #29, Something Special. My goal for this dive was to find where the Explore.org webcam was placed so that I’d have a point of reference while watching it at home. Ultimately, we got sidetracked by all of the underwater life and never did find the webcam, but, it was a great dive! We spent the last 20 minutes of the dive with an octopus who allowed us to trail behind him, without a care in the world. The first dive gave us squid. The second dive gave us an octopus. What would the third dive of the day provide?!

After lunch, our group of four did a dive at the resort’s 18th Palm, eager to get wet again and try for a trifecta of cool underwater sightings for the day. We weren’t disappointed, as Jon and I found a Hawksbill turtle after the turn point of the dive. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera and Josh had buddied up with Heather for the dive, so, we didn’t get any pictures of it, but, it was pretty awesome to see the critter on the house reef! Josh and Heather also found a nurse shark on the section of reef that they were exploring, which is reportedly a pretty rare occurrence, too.

Friday evening, the resort held a small party and BBQ for the guests that would be departing the resort the next morning. I can’t explain how GREAT it felt to know that we had a whole nother week left in Bonaire! We were (and still are!) so happy that we decided to take the two week trip this year – last year’s week was just not enough!