Karpata Reserve Dive - September 7, 2002

Photos/Video by Jake Richter

Using a housed Sony PC-100 MiniDV Cam

Orange Crinoid in the Karpata Reserve

Every year, the Bonaire Marine Park Volunteers organize a dive to record the current condition of the reefs on Bonaire using the ReefCheck protocol. Linda and I have been involved in these for most of the last 5 years. These dives are performed in areas where there is no diving permitted during the other 364.5 days of the year, namely in the Bonaire National Marine Park Reserve, which starts just north of Karpata, and continues on to just before BOPEC, and then resumes after Nukove to just before Slagbaai. For the last couple of years, we've been doing our surveys from shore about 1 km north of Karpata.

Linda's task this year was to count invertebrate indicator species, while mine was to record video of all the substrate and non-transient life along a 5 meter wide strip centered about two transect lines, each 100 meters long - one at 10 meters (30 feet) of depth, the other at 3 meters (10 feet) of depth. To capture all this I had to swim each transect twice - covering 2.5 meters of width in each pass. This produces pretty boring video, but it's something ReefCheck really wants to help with data verification.

While shooting the left (east) side of the deeper transect, I came across a pair of large adult squid acting rather oddly, so, after I finished my pass, I swam back to see if they would still be there, and lo they were. I started shooting, not knowing what to expect, and soon discovered that it was a mating pair, and that the female was planting her fertilized eggs in a crevice beneath a coral head.

This unedited video sequence is available by clicking the link below. You will need RealPlayer to view the movie, and a DSL or Cable Modem connection is highly recommended in order to view it properly - otherwise the squid images appear smeared by the video compression being used. Note also that the clearest footage of the squid activity is in the last minute of this 3 minute video.

Click to view movie: Squid Egg Laying

To download RealPlayer, Click here: