Sunday Stroll

Yesterday was a day to become re-acquainted with dive gear and to check out important dive matters such as buoyancy and weighting.

See, you don't need weight to get down as much as you need it to stay down. It's important to be neither underweighred (which can have you ascend from your dive too quickly, thus creating a scenario where you could get what's called "the bends") or overweighted, which can cause a different, albeit less fatal, set of problems.

Three dives in the day, one to 120 feet, and my first impression of the reefs of Bonaire is there was some event that has caused mass bleachings. This is not global warming, at least as far as I can tell, because the bleaching was widespread and happened in the course of a year.

If memory serves, there may have been an oil spill either a year and a half or two years ago. Bonaire is reliant on imports by sea, and there's a petroleum processing facility on the same coast as most of the pristine reefs.

Man does the most bizarre things with nature's bounty. The same protection offered to divers and fish makes Bonaire's channel the best place to site piers of all kinds, from cruise ships to tankers to the occasional military vessel.

Drug interdictions, you see.

I can't post pictures to prove the difference mostly because I haven't taken my camera with me yet. Once I've processed some photos, I can show you some startling and direct contrasts. It's very sad to see how many of my old friends have died off with more to come.