Diving Aquarius Bonaire | The Shore Dive Collection | TropicLens - 4K

The shear amount and diversity of sea life at Aquarius has pushed it up into our top five dive sites on Bonaire. There were so many first time captures here, we had to make a separate video just to handle the overflow! (Check out our Aquarius After Dark Dive Highlight video.) The ones we highlight here include a deep reef scorpionfish, arrow shrimp, jewel urchin, red glass-hair chiton, hemipolygona, lynx phidiana and an Atlantic longarm octopus.
The shallows are super easy for snorkeling and with a few sitting areas in the sand, Aquarius is a perfect site for divers and non-divers to spend a morning, afternoon or early evening to catch the sunset.
If you dive Aquarius, 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 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 (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.
Deepreef Scorpionfish - biogeodb.stri.si.edu/caribbea...
Arrow Shrimp - www.inaturalist.org/guide_tax...
Jewel Urchin - reefguide.org/lytechinuswilli...
Red Glass-Hair Chiton - www.reeflex.net/tiere/6810_Ac...
Hemipolygona - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemipol...
Lynx Phidiana - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phidian...
Atlantic Longarm Octopus - octonation.com/octopedia/atla...
STINAPA’s SCTLD Updates - stinapabonaire.org/bonaire-na...
CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
0:42 Site Background/Description
4:40 Site Logistics
7:53 Dive Profile
12:46 Sea Life - Night
16:13 Sea Life - Day
CAMERA EQUIPMENT
Underwater Camera - iPhone 14 Pro Max
Underwater Housing - Divevolk SeaTouch 4 Max
Underwater Lights - Kraken Hydra 8000 WRGBU
Camera App - Apple iOS Camera App
Land Camera - iPhone 14 Pro Max
Driving Camera - GoPro Hero 9 Black (using the GoPro suction cup mount)

[@SpencerPhotography]

Heck yesssssss. A new video just made my night!!

[@TropicLens]

Grab some popcorn! :-)

[@shotsbyscott6243]

Another beautiful video! Thanks for creating this and sharing to us!

[@TropicLens]

Thanks Scott! :-)

[@FrankRiedijk_NL]

Excellent footage again guys! Thanks Makes me long for returning to a good dive at Bonaire

[@TropicLens]

Thank you Frank! Most of the dive sites still look good. Tolo yesterday was disappointing, however. :-( We will have to mention that in the video. It's really sad.

[@rafuchs]

Your videos are the best! I'm at Bonaire right now and it helps a lot to pick wich sites we are visiting and what to expect. Thank you and greetings from Brazil ✌️

[@TropicLens]

You are too kind Rafael. Sorry we didn't respond sooner. Hope you enjoyed your time on the island...although SCTLD and the current bleaching event has diminished the experience a bit. Still, there is quite a lot to enjoy up and down the island. Brazil!?!? Nice to have an international fan. :-)

[@chrisfuller2991]

Hey David! I’ve been enjoying your videos for quite some time now. However, I just realized after watching this one that I had met you the day Leslie was injured. (I drove your truck to the hospital) I’m super happy to see she is back at it! Thank you for the videos! They are very helpful!

[@TropicLens]

No way! Small world, isn't it? While we are glad you enjoy the videos, we are even more grateful for your generosity and kindness that day. When are you coming back? We owe you drinks or dinner or something. :-)

[@chrisfuller2991]

@@TropicLens I was back there the first week of August so unfortunately I won’t be back until February. You owe me nothing. I was happy to help. Please keep the awesome videos coming, David! We all greatly appreciate them!

[@TropicLens]

Well, we'll see about that! Unfortunately, we'll be in Curaçao February and March, but will be back from April 1st. If you make the trek bi-annually, we'll mark you down for late summer 2024. :-)

[@chrisfuller2991]

@@TropicLens sounds good. Maybe we can meet for lunch or maybe even a dive! Take care!

[@bigv365]

Those juvenile golden coneys are always shy! so bright and beautiful though!

[@TropicLens]

Yes they are! :-)

[@chrishughes4788]

Great video David & Leslie! I've been waiting for this one to see your seahorse video! So many first time captures lately, very cool! Love the comments on the box crabs, too funny.... Again, great meeting and diving with both of you. Hope to see you in November!

[@TropicLens]

Thanks Chris. It was great meeting you and Wendy and we had a terrific time diving as well. Perhaps we can add on a dinner in November. :-)

[@chrishughes4788]

@@TropicLens definitely!

[@ManonBertrand_]

Again an amazing video of the under water world on Bonaire! Diving on the island myself at the moment. So these video's are very helpfull for some identification. 😊 Just wondering how many dives you guys do for such a video?

[@TropicLens]

Thank you so much for the kind words and we're glad you enjoy the videos. With respect to the number of dives for a video, it's typically a minimum of five (3 day/2 night). That said, we sometimes get a couple more in. For example, we're working on Red Beryl now and have clips from some fun dives earlier this year. Now we're hitting it pretty regularly to round out the footage. The beautiful thing about diving is that you never know what's going to swim by on any particular dive. :-) What have been your favorites sites here?

[@wabcriel1]

Wow, Really nice video, alot of special animals seen. Some colors are way off at some parts. Color correction afterwards?

[@TropicLens]

Indeed. Sadly, it looks like it was off a bit. :-( Will double check that in the future. Thanks!

[@johnmontgomery2735]

Very nicely done! We love that site and dive it multiple times every visit. We will be on the island Oct 1st if you guys want to get together for a dive or 2.

[@TropicLens]

Thanks John. Ping us before you get here. Another subscriber was on the island a few weeks ago and we went on a few dives. Chris found the seahorse...so no pressure for you. ;-) We will have several other friends on the island at that time as well, but will certainly carve out some time.

[@johnmontgomery2735]

@TropicLens my eyes are just not what they used to be. That will be my excuse after the dive. Although my dive buddies wife is young with great eyes. She spotted a frogfish and a seahorse on her first dive when we were at Curacao in March! So ill stick close to her!

[@johnmontgomery2735]

@@TropicLens we also love night diving

[@TropicLens]

Always up for a night dive!

[@Orisha1990]

Wonderful videos this place looks amazing. And if this is top 5 what are the other 4?!

[@TropicLens]

Salt Pier and Aquarius are up there...as well as Hilma Hooker. We need to go back north again...and we haven't profiled anything in the park yet. But those definitely stand out.

[@justsomeguy2943]

I LOVE nudis!!!!!!!

[@TropicLens]

Indeed; but they're so uncommon here. Still fun to look for though!