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.

Caribbean Princess - The Sea Days and Beaufort Force Scale

I’ve been meaning to do a post in regards to what our sea days looked like on a cruise ship.  During this cruise adventure, we felt a lot of motion on the ship and experienced a range of motion not felt before.  We were able to see a glass or mirror-like flat surface on the water to the extreme where we could see large waves/swells.

Princess provides us with a “log of the cruise” for each leg of our cruising adventure.  Each day the Captain reports distance traveled, speed, sky, temperature, and wind.  I was more interested in the wind and decided to do some research on what’s called the Beaufort Wind Force Scale.  The scale is based on a scale of 0 to 12 and relates wind to observed conditions at sea or on land.  In our case, we are interested in sea conditions.

Here’s a summary of our sea days and what the log captured based on the Beaufort scale.  Now remember we were on a 14-day cruise (B2B) and came back into FLL on Day 9 of our adventure.  Here what the log captured:

FIRST WEEK

Day 2 Sea Day:  North Easterly Beaufort Force 5
They describe this as a “fresh” breeze with winds at 17-21 knots or 19-24 mph.  Wave heights 6-9 ft.  Moderate waves of some length and many white caps.  Small amounts of spray.

Day 3 Sea Day:  North Easterly Beaufort Force 5
Another “fresh” breeze day.

Day 7 Sea Day:  North Easterly Beaufort Force 6
This is described as a “strong” breeze with winds at 22-27 knots or 25-31 mph.  Wave heights of 9-13 ft.  Long waves begin to form.  White foam crests are very frequent.  Some airborne spray is present.

Day 8 Sea Day:  Northerly Beaufort Force 5
Another “fresh” breeze day.

SECOND WEEK

Day 10 Sea Day:  West North Westerly Beaufort Force 9
Do you see the number 9?  That is considered to be “strong/severe gale” with winds at 41-47 knots or 47-54 mph.  Wave heights of 23-32 ft.  High waves whose crests sometimes roll over.  Dense foam is blown along wind direction.  Large amounts of airborne spray may begin to reduce visibility.




Day 14 Sea Day:  South Easterly Beaufort Force 2
Considered to be “light” breeze with winds 4-6 knots or 4-7 mph.  Wave heights 1-2 ft.  Small wavelets.  Crests have a glassy appearance and do not break.

I know on this day the Beaufort scale was much lower as the sea was like a mirror and sometimes I saw ripples that had an “appearance of scales” in the water.

Caribbean Princess - Our Cabin (part 1)

The Caribbean Princess is my second favorite Princess ship.  The last time we sailed with her was back in 2014 out of Bayport in Houston for our Western B2B cruise.  She is in great shape for her age (Bermuda...2004) and the crew onboard do a great job with the daily upkeep and maintenance.  She will be going into dry dock in March for I believe two weeks and it looks like it might be at the end of that month.  On the exterior front hull, she will be getting the Princess sea witch logo just like the Royal Princess has.  I heard she might also get new soft furnishings.  She will be fitted with the new Medallion technology with miles of cables installed, but the new technology will not go live until sometime in March 2018.  There is rumor that she may get the interactive TVs (to go along with the Medallion tech) like the Regal and Royal have.  Looking forward to sailing her again in 2018.

Here she is in Bonaire:


Our mini suite cabin is located on the port side about 9 cabins from the front of the ship.  We enjoy being this far forward and enjoy feeling the ship’s movement.  Years ago when we first started cruising we always preferred mid-ship.  Now that we are seasoned cruisers, we enjoy the forward spot which also turns out to be cheaper than mid-ship.  On the decks that have cabins, you can always tell the port side from the starboard side.  The port side carpet is blue and red while the starboard side is all blue:


In our cabin, we have two TVs:  one facing the bedroom and the other facing the living space.  It’s been an ongoing issue as one of the remotes will certainly turn on both TVs at the same time and also change channels when one is in the middle of watching a movie.

Here you can see we have the Princess vinyl protection luggage mat over our bed.  Our cabin steward place this on our bed on the last sea day.  That is not a nice thing to do to us first thing in the morning.  I know, I know...it’s packing day:


We love being in a mini suite for the extra room and living space. This extra space comes in handy to dry our snorkel gear and store our beach stuff.  

We try to keep our cabin neat so our cabin steward is in and out quickly.  I won’t mention what I’ve seen in other cabins.  Just picture…a tornado.   My early morning hours are spent here while I blog about our adventures:


Our cabin is one of the few that can be configured for up to 4 people.  Besides the bed and the pullout sleeper sofa in the living area, there’s a bunk bed that pulls down from the ceiling.  Cool, huh?  When I originally booked this cabin, I wasn’t too sure what the ceiling and bunk bed (when stored) would look like.  Would Hubby, who is tall, hit his head while walking towards the balcony?  I’m happy to say that the bunk bed is nicely stored and flushed with the cabin ceiling.  There’s a special key that unlocks a panel.  Sorry, I forgot my photog moment and so…no picture.

We love having a balcony.  It’s a great place to relax and listen to the ship cut through the swells.  It’s a great place to find some solitude away from our fellow cruisers.  You can also have quick chats with your balcony neighbors without spending a lot of time with them.  Eventually, they will go back to doing what they are doing.  Or I can leave the conversation and go back to doing what I was doing.  We enjoy having our own place to watch our ship sail into port.  Okay, the photographer loves having the freedom at the railing without having to elbow my way into a good spot.  Enough said.

It’s also a great place to take a nap or siesta and it doesn’t matter what time of day.  Trust me.  The gentle rocking and rolling will make one very sleepy:


From our balcony, we can wave to the boats that go by:


We can use our GoPros to see what the water looks like below us:


We see none of our balcony neighbors are out, so we enjoy the view towards the back:


And enjoy the view towards the front:


We became Elite in the middle of our B2B last year on the Regal Princess.  Shiv, our cabin steward on the Regal and one of the best we’ve had, spoiled us.  He explained to us what’s available and how to partake if we wanted to.  For example, as an Elite member, we are given a free bar setup each cruise:



Since we do not drink liquor, beer, or sodas, I call room service to remove the bar setup.  I can have them replace it with a bottle of wine or two coffee cards.  It usually takes a few hours for them to stop by our cabin and do the swap for us.

Also included with our Elite status is free laundry.  On this cruise we opted out of this.  Yes, we’ve used this service on our cruise in 2016 and let’s just say we got back some extra laundry that did not belong to us.

Princess has a laundromat on each cabin deck and on each side of the ship (port and starboard side).  I typically do one load of laundry during our B2B cruises.  I figure I can take a two hour break from all the cruising activities (like napping, eating, napping, and more eating) and have fresh clothes for the next week.  Also, the walking back and forth from cabin to laundromat and vice versa counts towards the minimum 10,000 daily steps required.  Burn baby burn.

For this cruise, I’ve swapped my normal cruise wear to more dri-fit type fabrics.  It lightweight, moisture wicking tech, and dries quickly.  That way I can use the bottle of Woolite (I purchased prior to getting on the ship) to do hand washings in our cabin sink.  There’s a handy clothes line in the cabin shower that I can use to hang dry my clothes.  I also bring with me plastic clothes line clips to hang our swimsuits and rash guard shirts.  It’s part of my nightly routine just like brushing and flossing my teeth.  I make sure I do the hand washing after the cabin steward turns down our bed for the evening.  That way he’s not hitting his head on our clothes while trying to clean our bathtub or refilling the soap and shampoo dispensers.

As an Elite, we have the ability to have afternoon tea in our cabin.  We have not done this, yet.  There is so much food available around the clock at various dining venues that by 3pm we are not hungry for more food.  Maybe next year we’ll try it.  I heard they bring A LOT of food with the tea.  Maybe we will skip dinner.  That will be an important food decision for next year.

Before I forget and while I’m on the topic of cabins, I wanted to share the bed configurations.
Most of the cabins can be configured for two twin beds:


Or move the two twin beds together to make a queen:


I was able to take a few pictures of some rooms during our turnaround in Ft Lauderdale.

More to come!

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: