Bonaire Dive Highlights - Just The Good Stuff - July/August 2024 | TropicLens

We went on a little hiatus from mid-July to mid-August; so, while this highlight video still covers about four weeks, it actually spans two months. We saw an incredible number of underwater animals including nine first time captures: worm sail (Vermetidae), delicate swimming crab, black grunt, ringed shy blenny complex, reaper murex shell, circled bumblebee shrimp, orange marginella, harlequin glass slug and a warty pleurobranch.

The animal behavior section is pretty awesome as well. Princess parrotfish mating? We got that. Bait balls? Yep! Yellowhead jawfish aerating eggs? No problem. We also captured a creole wrasse highway, a brittle star trying making a Herculean effort to pull fruit into it’s hole and a lightning fast bar jack snatching up a little snack.

And we didn’t skimp on the uncommon animals either. Those include an Atlantic gray cowrie, some mermaid’s wine glasses, a nimble spray crab, mangrove upsidedown jelly, lynx phidiana, leather-backed platydoris, ornate chiton and a rusty goby.


UNCOMMON SEA LIFE AND FIRST TIME CAPTURE IDENTIFICATION

We primarily use two sources to validate sea life we don’t recognize. The first is Florent's Guide To The Tropical Reefs which can be found at https://reefguide.org. Its free and has lots of pictures, but is not comprehensive. The second is “The Reef Set: Reef Fish, Reef Creature and Reef Coral (3 Volumes)”. The box set can be found on Amazon; however with all our travels, we also purchased the eBooks (http://fishid.com/store/product-categ...) so we don’t have to carry an extra five pounds of paper in our luggage. :-) We also reference other sources from time to time as well.

Here are some links to more information/images about animals from this video.

Worm Snail - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermetidae
Warty Pleurobranch - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleurob...
Harlequin Glass Slug - http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/cyer...
Rusty Goby - https://www.fishbase.se/summary/3897
Atlantic Gray Cowrie - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luria_c...
Black Grunt - https://www.fishbase.se/summary/1129

CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro
0:45 First Time Captures
4:25 Behaviors
10:24 Uncommon Sea Life

CAMERA EQUIPMENT

Underwater Camera - iPhone 15 Pro Max
Underwater Housing - Divevolk Seatouch 4 Max
Underwater Lights - Kraken Hydra 8000 WRGBU
Camera App - Black Magic Camera App