5-18-09 Day 2 in Bonaire

Today was another fabulous day. We did 3 dives in total today – 1 in the morning, 1 in the afternoon, and one night dive. The morning dive was the best. We saw 2 drumfish, eels, porcupinefish, and a super huge tarpon. However, the coolest thing ever was as we were surfacing, we encountered a huge school of fish. There must have been hundreds of thousands of them swimming together. They all turned synchronously and moved as one mass. It was amazing. It was also amazing to see them divide and then join together again as they swam past us. I tried to get some videos of their swarming behavior but was unable to get my camera to work properly, bummer! Our second dive was not super special as in we didn't see anything out of the ordinary but was good nonetheless. We did our night dive ourside our hotel. We saw some arrowcrabs, several different types of eels, huge tarpans, and a cute little rock crab. There were also some brittle stars but they shied away from the light very quickly. I think I saw an octopus but it got out of the light too quickly for me to be sure.

After our night dive, an interesting thing happened. The city lost electricity. Well, most of the city, a couple restaurants seemed to have generators. And the airport seems all electrified up. But we were without light and were forced to get dinner in town instead of cooking at hone as we had planned (bought lots of food at the supermarket today). After dinner, I came back and laid by the ocean and watched the stars. It was beautiful. There are always plenty of stars to be seen when on one of these tropical islands but without the hotel lights, i could see star systems between the stars, at least that's what it looked like, maybe I was hallucinating :). But in any case, very peaceful and beautiful,, staring at stars and listening to the ocean waves, and feeling the refreshing ocrean breeze.