filefish | Snorkeling the ABC Islands

We spent most of the morning on our lanai, enjoying the coffee, the view, the heat and the sun. That’s pretty much our morning, most days. Then we get moving for a leisurely swim. We drove around the coast and noticed how low the tide was! It made certain beaches more treacherous to enter so we headed back into downtown and jumped in around the main dock.

We’ve not really been in the water here, and while it was really cool, there was too much sandy beach! haha But wow, the stuff we saw! I’ve uploaded this movie of a scrawled filefish. This is usually a very shy fish and moves away when you come close. But as you can see from the movie, this guy wanted an up close and personal interview!

And then – we saw something that I didn’t even think was possible. We have seen MANY and I mean MANY moray eels. The purple-spotted morays we’ve seen have all been around two feet, some less, some slightly larger. Well today we saw one that was bigger than the biggest green moray we’ve ever seen! Just never knew they could grow that big – and our fish book says they can’t! So there….

For dinner, we decided to eat at a place called Donna Giorgio’s Trattoria. Well, put it on your list! Terrific little restaurant, done in a jazz-influenced way, with a tip of the fedora to the Bossa Nova. The menu is constantly changing, and is kept on a chalkboard. We split a Caesar’s salad ($13.50) which was a smart idea since the salad was very large and very tasty. For the main I had the Tagliatelle Pollo Cream ($18.50) which was absolutely delightful. Pam had the Roast Lamb with Risotto ($23.50) and she said it was so delicious she’d order it again! For desert we split a tiramisu ($9.50) and again – it would serve 3 easily. So just enough for us! I am not much on taking pictures of food, but look at the size of this tiramisu! Dinner with a twenty percent tip was $100 even and worth every penny!

Pam and I have felt an affinity with Bonaire since the minute we stepped off the plane a couple of years ago. Today while getting ready to dive in at Captain Don’s we met a couple from Malta. He reminded me so much of a friend of ours, a bon vivant named Jorge. He and his wife felt about Bonaire exactly as we did!

It’s just a wonderfully laid back place, with a very small population, in a rugged landscape, with amazing oceans teeming with fish. And fish we saw today, of course. Captain Don’s is a great place to snorkel, with an easy entrance and a sort of “dual reef” to the place.

You swim out to the drop off – not far, perhaps 150 meters – and watch all the action as the fish cavort on the edge of the wall. Huge schools of margates, bonefish, surgeonfish, chubbs, and others cruise slowly along. Then suddenly the hyper-active barjacks come looking for lunch and the little fish scatter.

This trip we’ve noticed some fish being kinda frisky – who knows? Maybe the release of Fifty Shades of Gray has got them worked up too, We saw a couple of porcupine fish seeming engaging in kissing and frisky behaviour, then Pam captured this movie of filefish doing the mating dance. (Well, it looks like they are doing the same mating dance that the gouramies we used to breed did.)

This picture of the face of a queen angel was tough to get. She hid down about twenty feet under a shelf of rocks. I dove down a couple times to get her, but they came out dark, so I turned on the forced flash. I think it turned out kinda cool. (and it was a LOT of work getting this sucker!)

One other thing we saw today that was unique. There were some jellyfish in the water, not a lot, but noticeable. While watching a scrawled filefish move effortlessly along, he suddenly started chowing down on one of them! Remarkable!