Diving in Bonaire in 2010

In late March 2010 we went back to Bonaire for some recreational diving and for some underwater research work. As usual, we rented a white Toyota pickup truck, stayed at the Sand Dollar and got our tanks from Bonaire Dive and Adventure.

My photo rig was:

• Nikon D300 body
• Nikkor 105mm
• Nikkor 12-24mm
• Ikelite housing
• Ikelite strobes (one DS-125 and one DS-160)
• +4 diopter (dry lens, had to be mounted inside the housing)

In retrospect, I can’t believe I did so many shore dives with that rig, whose dry weight was around 30 lbs. But I did, with no accidents.

At that time, we talked a lot about coral and its diseases, and as a consequence I would focus greatly on coral colonies during the dives. Some of them seemed to be doing well, while some others did not. I tried to capture all kinds of species and their varying conditions.

It was the first time I used the +4 diopter lens. It was limiting, because I had to mount it inside the housing and there was no way to change it during the dive. From one of my log book entries:

Must get face of camera 4 to 8 inches to subject, plus set lights accordingly, then find subject and stay still until autofocus finds itself and finally take picture, then repeat until a decent one is taken. Hard.

However, it did result in some pretty nice pictures, like the one of the Seaweed Blenny above.

Here’s the photo gallery from that week of diving: Best of Bonaire 2010