Bonaire - Hilma Hooker

Setting

Context (dive-operator and press sources): the Hilma Hooker is a 236-foot (72 m) inter-island freighter, seized as a drug-smuggling vessel in 1984, that took on water and sank at anchor on 12 September 1984 while held as evidence; it now rests on its side in about 100 ft (30 m) of water on a sandy bottom near a coral reef. The Hilma Hooker set covers three linked habitats: the wreck itself, the surrounding sand apron, and the adjacent reef (e.g., Image 2).

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General benthic features

The steel hull and railings are crusted with sponges, with very few (if any) corals growing on the wreck itself, and a memorial plaque lies nearby; the wreck is patrolled by barracuda and schools of grunts, with boulder corals and gorgonians on the adjacent reef (e.g., Image 7, Image 21).

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The reef includes massive and lobate corals, brain corals, and octocorals (e.g., Image 3, Image 4), and extensive staghorn-coral thickets (Acropora cervicornis, Anderson's identification) (e.g., Image 22, Image 25).

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Adjacent reef scenes are patchy but retain substantial live coral and octocoral structure, with no broad bleaching signal. The staghorn thickets contain abundant branch structure; photo review cannot reliably separate every live branch from old dead framework at distance.

Coral cover

• Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
• Coral cover: 19% on the reef beside the wreck — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 31 of Anderson's edited reef photographs (20 points per photo; water, fish, and obstructions excluded). The 5 photos of the wreck hull, which scored 0% coral, are left out, so the value describes the reef, not the ship. Other computer-vision methods are listed in the method table.

Stressors

One brain colony on the sand at the reef edge carries several small, clean-white patches of bare skeleton within otherwise pigmented tissue: recent mortality, cause not stated (e.g., Image 17, Image 28).

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No corallivores were evident.

Fish and other fauna

Barracuda, tarpon, parrotfish, and large fish schools use both reef and wreck habitat (e.g., Image 1, Image 5).

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Comparisons with other data

de Bakker et al. (2019) surveyed this site (station 21), 0.05 km from the pin. Within 5 km, ten independent stations recorded station-year means of 6.0–51% hard coral cover between 2004 and 2017; the nearest of these, Steneck et al. (2019) at Bachelor's Beach, 0.65 km away, read 32–48% between 2009 and 2017.

Other notes

The wreck frames are not evidence of benthic reef condition.