Learning About Caribbean Marine Life

It’s hard to imagine, but I’m still reviewing pictures from our January cruise.  I took over 3000+ pictures of which half were taken underwater.  As I was blogging about our snorkeling adventure, I realized I could only identify half the fish we saw.  Hubby was able to help me with a few more.  I found the plastic fish identification cards to help somewhat, but the drawings were too small.  So, I found a helpful book called “Snorkeling Guide to Marine Life” and have been updating my previous blog entries with the correct fish name.  It is time consuming, but I am learning so much.  For example, many juvenile fish do not look the same when they become mature fish.  It’s mostly colors that change from juvenile to initial stage and then to mature stage.

Hubby and I are learning more about Caribbean marine life.  We are learning about fish anatomy, different groups, corals, sponges, and other marine life.  I am only learning the common names for now.  Genus and species might come later.  We’ll see.

Here’s a Queen Parrotfish (Initial Stage) with a broad, white mid-body stripe.  I do not have a picture of the mature fish, but it would be a blue/green color with dramatic blue to green markings around the mouth.


Here’s another picture of the Queen Parrotfish (initial stage) in the center.  There’s a Blue Parrotfish in the upper left and an Orangespotted Filefish towards the back:


If you look real close in the center of this picture, you’ll see the Orangespotted Filefish with it’s white spot on the upper tail base:


Here’s a Bluehead Wrasse and some Brown Chromis (I believe…be back to validate):


Another picture with the Bluehead Wrasse with Spotlight Parrotfish (initial stage) and Queen Parrotfish (initial stage) in the background:


 Schools of French Grunt (yellow striped) and Brown Chromis:




Still waiting to identify this Parrotfish….






And this Parrotfish as well...







The pictures in this post were taken with a GoPro Hero 3+ at the Plaza Resort Bonaire.

Day 7 & 8: Sea Days, Laundry, and Other Activities!

(In order to catch up and keep up, I have combined the last two sea days into one post.  I can do this, because we are camped out in our cabin for most of today.  We just hit a 20 foot swell and all the drawers in our cabin flew open.  Also, Hubby poured a glass of wine for me to calm my nerves/stomach (which is made of cast iron I am told).  My wine glass started to slide across the table and I caught it in time before it dumped its contents on my MacBook laptop.  I am not kidding when I say this is a “first" adventure for us in really rough waters and this is our 18th cruise with Princess.  So many first for us on this B2B cruise!  We thought our last Caribbean Princess cruise out of Houston (2014) and the Gulf of Mexico was rough…that was mild compared to what we are going through right now.  D and M, be thankful you are not on this cruise with us.  Hubby really means this!

We are not alone this afternoon.  There are two other ships in the not too far horizon.  A Carnival ship and a Royal Caribbean ship.  Good thing I brought our binoculars with us.  I was watching the Carnival cut through some swells, but they are going at a slower pace.  So our Princess Captain is not alone.  Remember when I mentioned in an earlier post that it will get rougher before getting better?  I think we’re going through the rougher stage now.  )

Back to our Sea Day post.

We left Bonaire around 5pm.  An hour and 25 nautical miles later, the Captain makes an announcement that we will be turning around and heading back to Bonaire.  We have a medical emergency.  A crew member has fallen ill and the doctor onboard has made a decision, they can not do anything more for the crew member and she needs to be hospitalized.  Before the announcement, I noticed we had slowed down.  The Captain slowly turned the ship around on the port side and quickly cruised back to Bonaire.  Two hours later and it’s completely dark outside, we could see the lights of Bonaire.  I walked around the Promenade deck to see if the Captain was going to drop a tender, but there was no activity.

I wandered up to our cabin and stuck my head out of our balcony.  I could see the Pilot boat from Bonaire following us.  I grabbed my camera, because that’s what I do…capture the moment.   I try not to hang over our balcony as I could see the Captain standing on the bridge.  Remember, we can see up to the bridge and they can look down on us.  So watching my P’s & Q’s, because I do have them, I carefully lean over and take a few shots:


This is an incredible feat.  The crew lowers the ship’s tender door on deck 4 while the Pilot boat tries to keep up with the ship.  We eventually slow down to a stop so they can offload the crew member safely.  Do you see how dark it is?  I watch as the Pilot boat speeds away:


By the time the Caribbean Princess starts up and then turns around to head out, I noticed the Pilot boat has reached land.

The next day (day 7: sea day) we learn the female crew member has stabilized and is in improving at the hospital in Bonaire.  I know Princess will take great care of her during her recovery.

We are recovering from our three day port intensive adventures.  Hubby is a bit under the weather and is in nap mode most of the day.  I spend some time in the morning reviewing all the pictures taken and then go out in search of well, more food.  If you notice by now, there are hardly any foodie pictures.  That’s because they are all on my iPhone.  Another camera device that I need to collect pictures from.  Don’t worry.  I will devote a whole blog post to the culinary delight on the this ship.

Tonight (Day 7) is the last formal night for this cruise.  What do we do?  Laundry!  I don’t mind this task as everyone is getting dressed up and we’ll be the only ones in the Laundry room.  

There are two sets of Maytag washer and dryer:

Sink basin:

 

Swipe your cruise card to get tokens.  One token for washer and one for dryer.  Another different token for powder detergent and for fabric softener.  You can get both tokens at this machine (touchscreen):  

The machine containing the powder detergent and fabric softener:  

It’s 40 minutes for the washer and 45-50 minutes for the dryer.

There are two iron stations:  

Including warnings:  

We decide to go up to deck 15 and watch a movie “Keeping Up With the Joneses”.  I keep an eye on the time.  I leave Hubby at MUTS (Movies Under the Stars) and go down to our laundry room to move the clothes from the washer to the dryer.  I head back up to deck 15 and stop in the Buffet to pick up some desserts and carry them over to MUTS.  This really works out well as the Buffet and our laundry room are located at the back of the ship but on different decks.  I don’t mind as this helps me maintain the minimum of 10,000 steps a day routine.  Burn baby burn!

I pick up the dried clothes and drop them off in our cabin.  I run back to deck 15 and stop by Scoops (ice cream place) and pick up two packages of popped corn.  I get back in time to see the end of the movie with Hubby.   I’ve learned to multi-task while on the ship and still spend quality time with Hubby.

Yes, the sea days are a blur.  We can do a lot or do nothing.

(I need to stop here and leave the cabin for a bit.  I’m getting claustrophobic and need to stop looking out the balcony and see all this wave action.  I’ll be back)

On the last day and last sea day of our cruise we continue with our R&R part of the cruise.  We have a few things scheduled.  I meet up with D and M for the Culinary Demo show in the Princess Theater.  An hour later we are on a tour of one of the ship’s galley.  In one area they are working on today’s desserts for the dining room.

Hubby and I meet up with D and M later in the afternoon for BOGO.  D and M will be leaving the ship tomorrow and was working on their packing skills for a few hours.  We invited them to the PEL or Platinum and Elite Lounge drink specials and pre-dinner hors d’oeuvres.  

Mango margarita (BOGO$):  

We had another appointment to attend and was late getting to the Voice of the Ocean in the Princess Theater and it was packed.  Instead we went to Explorer’s Lounge to catch the “simulcast” of the show.  OMG.  We were definitely spoiled by the singers (fellow cruisers) on the Regal Princess last year.  Still it was a fun show and Samantha, who I wanted to win, won by 52% of the votes.

The last show for our evening was the International Crew Show.  This is a unique show as the Caribbean Princess is the only Princess ship to host this special event.  We were not disappointed.  The crew did a great job entertaining us with their songs and dance numbers.  Really talented crew members onboard this ship.

While waiting for the International Crew Show to start, we entertain ourselves with balloons:  

We had smooth sailing the last two sea days in contrast to the first two sea days earlier in the week.  We had a great time sailing on my second favorite ship and visiting the southern most Caribbean islands.  We are resting up for our next adventure.  Hint…Western Caribbean!

(I will be back to add additional pictures when time allows).  Thank you for your patience!

Day 6: Bonaire - Underwater Life

(Before we get into our discussion about life under the sea, the Captain made an announcement in our cabin this morning.  11:30 am to be precise.  When that happens, you know he is trying to reach out to everyone on the ship even if you happen to be in the shower.  His talk is about the adverse weather we are currently experiencing and will be as well.  I stand corrected, we are not sailing at 19 knots.  It’s more like 17 knots.  The winds are 45 knots.  Really rough swells.  As I type this, we just hit a huge swell and felt a huge shudder.  Hubby said that might have been a 15 foot swell we hit.  I am sitting on the floor in front our glass balcony door with the curtains wide open.  The sun is out on our side of the balcony, port side.  I tried to go out on our balcony, but my hair starts flying into knots that I have a difficult time combing out later.  So I safely sit inside working on my tan and passing along important information to you on our blog.

Oh yes, back to the Captain’s announcement.  Adverse weather, right.  The current condition does not allow us to go faster than 17 knots.  We will be experiencing this for the next 10 hours.  So much for Formal Night tonight and no high heels.  I have a funny feeling that it will get a bit worse before it gets better.  As we are traveling in slow mode, this will affect our day in port tomorrow.  We are suppose to be in Costa Maya from 7am-5pm.  Looks like the really nice Captain will adjust our time.  Arrive late and leave late.  Wahoooo!

The Captain stressed that when moving about the ship to hold onto railings.  Be careful when opening and shutting doors.  Enjoy our day!

I wanted to add as I am sitting on our cabin floor, my rear end can feel the tenders below us banging against the railings.  Our cabin is creaking and the curtains are swaying back and forth.  Got to love this and we didn’t have to pay extra for this!  )

Okie dokie, back to my post on Bonaire.

I’ve already mentioned that Bonaire is a National Marine Park.  That includes the entire coast of Bonaire including Klein Bonaire and Lac.  That’s about 6,700 acres.  It is home to endangered sea turtles, conch, and sharks as well as coral reef, sea grass, and mangroves.  They are part of a system that protects the marine environment while maximizing appropriate levels of recreation and commercial use.  Marine park staff maintain around 100 public moorings, conduct scientific research, provide information to users, monitor human and natural impact and enforce the park’s laws and regulations.

Bonaire and Klein Bonaire are surrounded by an almost continuous fringing reef.  A shallow and narrow terrace slopes down gently from the shoreline to a depth of 30 feet and then drops, typically at an angle of 45 degrees, to depths of 130 feet.  There are also some vertical walls and double reef formations.

With GoPro in hand, we head out into the clear blue water.  Here I find a big fish:



I suppose this constitutes a gentle 45 degree slope into the dark depths of the ocean:

I truly love my big fish!  He’s such an adventurer and my personal lifeguard:


Blue Tang, Parrot fish, and Grunts.  It was cool watching the Parrot fish eat the coral.  They have some really big teeth:


More Blue Tang:








Can you find the Bluehead Wrasse?

I pop my head out of the water to see how far we’ve snorkeled.  We’ve cover quite a bit of distance:

The fish were everywhere.  I figured out a trick here.  If I stay quiet and in one place, the fish would eventually come closer and swim by me.


I was following this Damselfish.  It is quite small and very quick:

Beautiful beach area at Plaza Resort:  

Hubby and I spent a total of 2 hours snorkeling.  We even had a kayak encounter.  I took a video of kayakers who were heading in our direction.  It was like the parting of the sea only it was parting of the kayakers.

All of the underwater pictures were taken with a GoPro Hero 3+.  I still need to make some adjustments while in camera mode.  Hubby was using his new GoPro Hero 5 and took lots of videos both in and out of the water.

Here we are leaving Bonaire and sailing past Plaza Resort Bonaire: 

Day 6: Plaza Resort Bonaire (part 2)

(I’m having to break up our blog posts into several parts for two reasons.  One, I have too many pictures in my post (go figure) and uploading has been hit or miss with some errors.  Two, the Internet connection can be a bit wacky when we encounter bad weather.  My Tx rate would go from 130 Mbps all the way down to a measly 10 Mbps.  The AP (access point) is just 4 doors down from our cabin.  Yes, one day I managed to look up before running down the hall to get some skinny mocha at IC (International Cafe).  

Oh yeah, we are having some extremely bad weather on the ship.  Early this morning, Hubby and I, woke up to a lot of rocking and rolling and swaying on the ship as we are sailing north of Cuba.  It’s been thundering and lightning and raining.  Oh and I should not forget to mention strong winds across the upper decks.  The ship’s marine log says the seas are “rough” with 8-12 ft swells.  Yes, we can feel it.  I managed to slip between the curtains the glass door of our balcony.  I tried to grab shots of the lightning and then videos of all the weather related stuff as we sail through this at 19 knots or so.  Did I mention the wind?

So, I’m sitting on the floor of our cabin (can feel the motion better) and trying to type this blog post and insert pictures.  At some point, I might pass out from all this movement.  It’s making me sleepy.  No worries, I have a short drop to the floor.  )

Enough of my bantering and onto the good stuff.

I am fascinated with the recycled pier.  This picture bothers me because it is crooked.  It does show the feeling when the water moves:



Hubby and I snorkeled from one side of the resort to the other side near the concrete pier:


More water shots:



How about some wave action:


Steps/ladder I used to get in and out of the water.  Can you see the fish swimming near the ladder?



Can you see it?


How about this one?


It doesn’t take much to amuse me.