Ashlynn’s Marine Project...

During the nearly six weeks in Koh Pha Ngan, Ashlynn dove for five weeks. The first few dives were lessons on dive research by staff from the NGO CORESea (Center for Oceanic Research and Education).  

These photos show happy underwater moments, but don’t show that most of their one-hour long shallow dives were used to count the number of Drupella sea snails and record which type of coral they were found on and are presumed to eat.

Here’s a nice shot of a Drupella. Ashlynn used the data collected for her bachelor’s dissertation, which earned an A. You can read her team report by scrolling down on this post.

Ashlynn tried free diving and really enjoyed it. She also enjoyed the warm water.

 

Diving in Madeira...

Since the water temps were cold enough to require thick wetsuits, I once again watched my family head off to go scuba diving without me.

It’s just as well that I didn’t go, because both girls loved the dives but they were very cold. They went down to 95 feet (29 meters) on the first dive and 65 feet (20 meters) on the second. There was no coral, but lots of eels, crabs and fireworms on the rocks. They especially enjoyed seeing a sea turtle and a ray. 

I enjoyed seeing their boat in the distance from two vantage points. If you look very carefully you’ll see them in the middle of this one...

...and then moving between dive sites.

More Diving....

Since the dive boat was at a shallower dive site, Viktor took Jimmy and Ashlynn out on the Zodiac to get to a deeper site.

Ashlynn was thrilled that Viktor let her drive part of the time.

They did two dives with the deepest to 85 feet (26 meters). They went through a shaft and saw an underground boulder shaped like a pyramid.

They saw another nudibranch and some fireworms. While they were diving, I enjoyed talking to a guy who was doing an intensive divemaster course as extra training for his regular job in the Montenegrin police special forces.

2nd Dive...

Whereas we started the day around the backside of Old Town, the second dive was at the St. Nikola Island, which is frequently seen in my photos from the beach at Budva.

They went into two short tunnels. This one shown was horizontal. 

The other was vertical and they had to use their hands to climb up; they were still underwater when they came out of the other end. Sounded scary to me, but they loved it.

I enjoyed having a nice chat with the captain, who was born in Hungary but spent much of his life in Serbia. In addition to working for the dive company, he works in underwater construction.

On this dive to 38 feet (11.5 meters) they saw two eels and two nudibranchs, which Ashlynn learned about last summer in Tanzania.

First Dive...

The scenery surrounding the first dive location just past Mogren Beach was stunning. They went into the cavern in the center of the photo.

They saw a small lobster, fish and fireworms, which Ashlynn said were especially cool as you can see from this photo they took.

Temps were a bit chilly at 61°F (16°C) at a depth of 63 feet (19 meters)....

....but Ashlynn didn’t mind as she was just happy to be diving again.

Our Little Diver...

Ashlynn has always loved mermaids, so it’s always great to see her transform into one herself.

Of course, she doesn’t look anything like Ariel in that thick wetsuit, but she’s still a mermaid at heart.

Here is Jimmy getting help with his gear from the ship’s captain, the father of the divemaster that led their dives.

This was the first time that Ashlynn did a giant stride off of a boat as all her previous boat dives were from small Zodiacs.

Girls’ First Boat Dive...

Not only was this the girls’ first boat dive, but this was the first time Jimmy did a backward roll entry and the first time any of them dove in Europe.

Jimmy actually had some complications when they arrived at the dive site because the water was choppy and he had the wrong amount of weights, but got everything sorted and they all had a good dive. Ashlynn said it was very peaceful with lots of schools of fish.

Diving in the Mediterranean....

There was a diving school operating at the beach in Port Grimaud, so Jimmy signed up to take the girls scuba diving one morning. After finding out that they’d be wearing thick wetsuits, I decided to pass as I’m strictly a warm water diver.

Our Ninja Diver

Night Diving...

It was very nice that some of our neighbors at Belmar invited Jimmy to join them for night dives after discovering that I was grounded. He felt so comfortable after diving two nights in a row on the house reef that he decided to take the girls out. Technically, night diving is reserved for advanced divers. However, the conditions here are so perfect for beginners, that he figured the risk was very low. These photos were taken on the first night when he brought them out together just around the dock to get comfortable with the strange underwater world at night. The following night, he took them out one-at-a-time for a 20-minute dive on the house reef. Ashlynn was a bit freaked by the large tarpon that followed them, but loved the bio-luminescent fish.

An Unwelcome Guest...

All of Bonaire’s coast is a protected national marine park, so spear fishing is strictly prohibited. However, there is one exception: it is legal to kill the Pacific Lionfish. As beautiful as they are, this poisonous fish is not native to the Caribbean, but is an invasive predator that is killing many fish that are needed to keep the reef ecosystem in balance. There’s a theory that the lionfish might have escaped from a Florida aquarium during a hurricane in 1992. First spotted in Bonaire in October 2009, we were asked to report the location of each lionfish we saw. Click here to see a short video clip of two lionfish the girls saw.

An Unusual Easter Egg Hunt...

The girls were thrilled when they found out that there was to be an Easter egg hunt at Belmar on the Monday after Easter. Of course, this wasn’t a typical egg hunt as it was an underwater hunt for egg-shaped pieces of coral that had been painted orange and numbered. They were even more thrilled when all three of them found eggs; their prizes were a fish identification card, a small drypack and a tank banger (to get your dive buddy’s attention).

A Variety of Eels...

There were several varieties of eels in Bonaire. Not surprisingly, we mostly saw them in crevices in the coral, but occasionally saw them swimming. Check out the cool brain coral above.

Big Fish, Little Fish...

There was a huge variety of fish that traveled in schools, including the smallmouth grunt shown here, from tiny goby to beautiful blue tangs. The largest fish we managed to photograph was the barracuda above. We missed the large tarpon that showed up for the night dives.