Bonaire - Playa Frans | The Shore Dive Collection | TropicLens

Playa Frans is a bit of a trek. The last 4.5 miles is over dirt roads with deep potholes and long tire ruts, giving your vehicle quite a workout! Driving carefully will ensure you get there and back safely, which is important because there is no cell service the last three miles. When you arrive, you will see some beautiful landscape including a nice salt pan that is home to a number of local birds.

Of course, the sea life is amazing as well. The reef is in great condition and the drop off spectacular. We got two first time captures here: a yellow-lined flatworm and an Atlantic bird squid. Other highlights include a spotted spiny lobster aerating its eggs and a roaming school of blue tang.

If you dive Playa Frans, please add a comment and let us know what you saw there.

We want to encourage more shore diving, so this video provides some guidance where the site is, how to dive it and what you may see there. If you want to skip to or review specific topics, the section timings are below.

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 TheTropical 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.

* Yellow-Lined Flatworm - https://www.reeflex.net/tiere/16211_P...
* Atlantic Bird Squid - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornitho...
* Spiny Flower Coral - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mussa_a...
* Spotted Spiny Lobster - https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/1083...


CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro
0:58 Site Background/Description
4:42 Site Logistics
9:45 Dive Profile
13:19 Sea Life
16:53 Night Diving


CAMERA EQUIPMENT

* Underwater Camera - iPhone 15 Pro Max
* Underwater Housing - Divevolk Seatouch 4 Max
* Underwater Lights - Kraken Hydra 8000 WRGBU
* Camera App - Final Cut Camera and Blackmagic Cam
* Land Camera - iPhone 14 Pro Max
* Driving Camera - GoPro Hero 9 Black (using the GoPro suction cup mount)