The marine park and who runs it

Black and yellow stripes, in shoals just below the surface. The first fish you see.

Deep blue, grazing on algae in loose groups. Juveniles are bright yellow.

Yellow-striped, hanging still in shoals by coral heads during the day.

Small and everywhere; cleans larger fish at cleaning stations.

Long and thin, hanging vertically among gorgonians so as not to stand out.

Silver with a yellow stripe and tail, curious around snorkellers.

Audibly nibbles at coral and so produces much of the white sand.

Yellow and blue with a crown mark on the forehead; usually in pairs.

Black with yellow scale edges, lets divers come close.

An eye spot at the rear that puts predators on the wrong foot.

Triangular and slow, looking for morsels in the sand between the coral.

In crevices, mouth open to breathe — no threat, but keep your distance.

Purple-blue clouds feeding in the current above the reef edge.

Electric blue, in loose swarms just above the coral.

Dark with pale fin edges; curious and often keeps station near divers.

A large grouper that waits motionless by a coral head for something to pass.

A silver giant up to two metres; hangs in the shade by day, hunts at dusk.

In fast groups along the reef edge, often hunting above a shoal of small fish.

Stands upright out of the sand like grass and vanishes as soon as you approach too fast.

Hovers above its burrow; the male broods the eggs in his mouth.

A flatfish with blue rings that buries itself in the sand; easily overlooked.

Lies half under the sand and forages at night. Never swim after it.

Spotted, with a long tail; usually passes by out in the blue.

Lies motionless on the sand until it strikes in a single movement.

Looks like a sponge, does not move. Often reported at Bari Reef, La Machaca and Ebo’s Special.

Tail curled around a gorgonian or sponge base. Do not touch and no close-up flash.

Perfectly camouflaged on the bottom, with venomous spines. Watch where you put your hand — or put it nowhere.

Crawls over the sand between the coral heads during the day.

In an anemone, at a cleaning station where big fish queue up.

Mostly at night, betrayed by a heap of empty shells outside the den.

When sea temperature stays high, coral expels its algae and bleaches. Recovery is possible, provided the water cools in time and no second heatwave follows. Bonaire took heavy bleaching in 2010 and again during the Caribbean heatwave of 2023.

Stony coral tissue loss disease affects dozens of species and moves fast. It travelled through the Caribbean from 2014; sources differ on the year Bonaire had its first confirmed cases. Divers are asked to disinfect gear between islands.

The mass die-off of the black sea urchin Diadema in 1983 removed one of the most important grazers; in 2022 a new die-off hit Caribbean populations. Where grazers disappear, algae gain ground on coral.

Runoff from unpaved roads, building sites and waste water brings sediment and nutrients onto the reef. That feeds algae and smothers young colonies — a land problem with its outcome underwater.

A round boulder with winding grooves. Grows a few millimetres a year; a boulder a metre across is a century old.

Thick, domed colonies with large polyps that stand out at night like flowers.

Builds columns and terraces on the slope. Was once the most important reef builder in the Caribbean.

Thin, undulating plates overlapping like leaves; mainly in sheltered spots.

Upright pillars, rare and protected. Visible at Petries Pillar.

Broad antler branches in the surf zone. Largely gone since the eighties; still standing at Boka Bartol and Nukove.

Thin, branching arms. Grows relatively fast and is therefore the main species in the nurseries.

Thick, blunt fingers on the reef top; juvenile fish shelter between them.

Not a true coral but a hydroid. Mustard yellow with white edges, stings on contact.

A purple fan that grows at right angles to the current. Breaks easily and takes years to recover.

Feathery plumes that make the reef top sway in a light current.

Thick, upright fingers with short polyps; feels leathery, do not touch.

Despite the name it is white to brown; the skeleton beneath is black. From twenty-five metres down, decades old.

A barrel over a metre wide, hundreds of years old. Two divers fit beside it, not inside it.

Bundles of long purple tubes on the deeper slope; the hallmark of the walls of Klein Bonaire.

Broad orange plates in overhangs, often with brittle stars on them.

Grey-brown spheres on the reef top; filters thousands of litres of water a day.

Grows leaning to the south-west under the constant trade wind. The island’s best-known natural compass; the pods were once exported for tanning leather.

Stands bare all year and then flowers bright yellow all at once, a few days after heavy rain. The name means axe-breaker: the wood is rock hard.

Lignum vitae, with blue flowers and wood that sinks in water. Cut for centuries for ship bearings; old specimens are rare and protected.

Stands on stilt roots in the brackish water of Lac. Nursery for reef fish and coastal defence in one.

The thorny mesquite that fills much of the interior. Goats eat the pods and so spread the seeds.

Calabash tree with fruits once used as bowls and musical instruments.

Columnar cactus up to nine metres. The fruit is edible and the stems go into the traditional soup; old trunks served as fencing.

A thinner columnar cactus, planted close together as a living fence around kunukus.

Pad cactus with yellow flowers and fine barbs that are worse than the large spines.

A globe cactus with a red cap on top. Protected; do not dig it up and do not sit on it.

Broad seagrass in the shallow bays; the main food of the green sea turtle.

Thinner seagrass standing among the turtle grass; together they form the nursery of Lac.

Round leathery leaves just behind the high-water line; holds the sand in place.

Low, fleshy plants around the brine pans, one of the few species that survive there.

Grown on a large scale in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; still found gone wild along the roads.

A large shade tree by old kunukus, with sour pods for syrup and drinks.

The grain of the kunuku, grown behind walls of stacked stone that hold the rainwater.

Breeds in the Pekelmeer, one of the few breeding sites in the Caribbean. The breeding ground is closed: watch from the road and use no drone.

The yellow-shouldered amazon, loud in the early morning and evening. Occurs in only a handful of places in this hemisphere.

A smaller parakeet, in small groups around the kunukus and the town.

Orange and black, with a hanging nest and a whistling call you hear everywhere.

The mockingbird that comes to eat on your terrace and imitates other birds.

The bananaquit: small, yellow and immediately at every sugar bowl.

A bird of prey that walks along the road and eats carrion; often seen in the north.

In the salinas and mangroves of Lac, together with migrating waders. The scarlet ibis is only a rare vagrant here.

Up to a metre and a half including tail. Eaten in soup on the island; used to visitors at car parks — do not feed.

A small tree lizard found only on Bonaire. The male raises an orange throat fan.

The fast racerunner that darts under the bushes everywhere. The male turns blue — hence the name.

A small gecko on walls and tree trunks, active in the evening around lamps.

The island’s only snake species: twenty centimetres at most, harmless, eats termites and ants. Probably introduced by people. There are no boas or other large snakes on Bonaire — those are on Aruba — and no sea snakes swim in the water.

Eight to nine species depending on the source: one fish-eater, five insect-eaters and two nectar feeders. The nectar feeders are the only animals that pollinate the columnar cacti — without them, no kadushi. They roost in caves; visit those only with a guide.

Brought in the seventeenth century as pack animals, now gone feral. They walk loose along the roads in the south: drive slowly at night.

The greatest pressure on the vegetation: without fencing, young trees never get above knee height.

Land crabs that cross in numbers after rain; some roads have warning signs.