Bonaire remains a laid-back island offering superb diving. However, the devil has been introduced in the form of cruise ships.

But the reefs are still fantastic.

Scenes include not just corals but sponges, sea plumes and a myriad of other animals.

For better or worse, this was an attempt to capture the abundance of little brown chromis fishes above a reef.

Not only the reefscapes, but the coral patterns are beautiful – such as this boulder star coral.

And this great star coral.

Actually, it's excellent star coral but the "great" is part of its name, not a value judgment.

This is a structure of brain coral that started as two different polyps and grew together.

We saw many of the usual suspects: schools of blue tangs, some spotted morey eels, groups of striped grunts like these guys.

Parrotfishes still earn their livings scraping algae (and coral) off coral structures.

I've shot Christmas tree worms in the past, but rarely in such numbers as these on a cement block anchoring a mooring buoy.

Then there are featherduster worms, which also live in holes in the corals and filter plankton from the current.

There are cleaning stations, where little fishes and shrimps scuttle around larger fish's bodies eating dead scales and parasites off the client's skin.

Banded coral shrimp usually hang out under ledges, waving their tentacles to attract customers. I stuck my camera under one ledge and got this photo. I confess that it hadn't occurred to me that they do their thing hanging upside down.

I found this little roughhead blenny peering out of his hole in a head of brain coral, curiously watching the world – and divers – go by.

Flamingo tongues are little snails with colorful sheathes covering their shells. On this trip it was quite noticeable as to how they work their way up stalks of sea rods eating the polyps right out of them.

Sometimes they work in gangs.

One day my dive buddy, Kermit Smith, and I went south of the town and dove Pink Beach.

This is Kermit.

Although it requires a surface swim from the shore, the Pink Beach reef is one of my favorites because it's so rich with life.

It has a lot of sponges and sea plumes, giving it a wild, primeval feeling.

I found this little goldentail eel in a crevice.

He moved around a few times. This is the golden tail of a golden tail eel.

Essentially, I was mooned by an eel.

We spent one afternoon with naturalist Dee Scarr, suiting up on a jetty near the center of town.

This is the view along the seawall to the north.

This is the view to the south. Did I mention the affliction of cruise ships?

Here, Dee is pointing out some coral heads that are about dozen years old – suggesting the speed with which coral grows.

This is a sponge that Dee refers to as bubble gum sponge.

On this dive, we saw this featherstar perched on an elephant ear sponge.

Dee's program is called "Touch the Sea" and emphasizes interaction with animals.

The animals best like interaction if it involves being fed, like this spotted trunkfish.

We also had the opportunity to feed them. Here, our fellow diver Anandi offers a piece of hot dog to a French angelfish.

Enthusiastic little guy, isn't he?

Dee often makes friends with octopuses. However, this one apparently was brooding eggs and was reluctant to come out of her den.

Octopuses often surround the the entrances to their homes with rocks, pieces of coral and other debris – including, in this case, an old bottle.

One afternoon, Kermit and I did dives at sites called Oil Slick Leap and Andrea 1. Andrea 1, shown here, is behind a big development of newly constructed condos – "villas," in developers terms.

The major event of the Andrea 1 dive was an up-close turtle encounter.

I was able to spend some time swimming with this guy. He was about 20 inches in length.

He was actually much more tolerant about it than I would have been if someone had stuck a camera in my face for five minutes.

Eventually, we had to go our separate ways. We promised to write.

Rock beauty fish.

Returning to shore across a lot of dead coral at Andrea , we passed these young coral structures.

On other dives, we saw lettuce sea slugs. The skin ruffles on their backs increase their ability to absorb oxygen.

This guy was losing his grip on the coral, so was in an unusual pose. Shortly afterwards, he fell off the coral ledge and floated to a lower level.

Scrawled filefish.

And this is a whitespotted filefish (during some phases he does break out in white spots).

This is an orange-spotted cleaning shrimp, living in a sea anemone.

A sad note is that Bonaire was subjected to a tropical storm that lingered over the island for three days in November. It caused damage to docks and walls along the shore and to some corals, sea fans and other marine life. This plate coral is still heavily sedimented from the storm, quite likely placing it in peril.

On a boat dive to Klein Bonaire ("little Bonaire," the offshore island), our dive leader said she would show us a frogfish. She did; it's that greenish/yellow lump in the center. Most frogfishes I've seen looked pretty much like strange fish. This one did what frogfishes are supposed to do: camouflaged itself to look nothing like a fish.

These little silversides were patroling the rocky wall at the site of one boat dive.

This is one of my favorite dives sites on the island, 'Ole Blue. In the distance is another excellent one, Rappel. Its name reflects the fact that early divers rappelled down the cliff to enter the water, drift diving to 'Ole Blue to exit.

After diving 'Ole Blue, we took the long way home and drove past Goto Meer, Bonaire's land-locked salt-water lake.

Among other things, it's home to flamingos, Bonaire's iconic bird.

There was excellent diving on the reefs in front of our hotel, Buddy Dive Resort. One day, this school of palometa fishes was cruising along right in front of the dock.

It's not uncommon to see individual lizardfishes sitting around, but seeing two was unusual, in my experience.

You may ask: Where's the second one?

Right here.

Goatfish, all lined up.

Soapfishes look like lazy bums because they just lie around on the bottom. The name comes from a soap-resembling mucus that is toxic to predators, so apparently they can lie around in the open all they want.

Trumpetfishes appear in several colors but there's only one species (plus the smaller cornetfish) in the Caribbean. They just change colors.

Peacock flounder. Uaually they stay right on the bottom trying to blend in.

Tiger grouper.

Tiger grouper's teeth.

I was intrigued by the complex interior architecture of this encrusting colonial tunicate.

On the last day, we encountered this feeding frenzy, which at one point featured four scrawled filefishes and five trumpetfishes, among others, jockeying for their chance at an egg mass.

The feeding frenzy.

We swam over to the next site off the Habitat Resort, where there's a small boat sunk as a wreck. We made friends with this tarpon, nicknamed Charlie, who often follows divers around (at night he hunts prey by the beams of their dive lights).

The little wreck's hull hosts a number of night sergeant and sergeant major fishes guarding nests. The males swim above them relentlessly chasing off potential, egg-loving predators.

These sergeant majors were engaging in finning, a behavior in which they scoot their abdomens along a surface to prepare to lay a nest.

If I understand the behavior correctly, they also lay eggs and fertilize them in this manner.

I didn't perceive any eggs being laid so I presume they were in the preparation stage.

We ended our last dive with this bunch of gray snappers hanging out near the dock. It wasn't clear what they were transfixed on.

Then, running out of time and air, we got out and went home.