I was a wife and mother of small children when I took up scuba diving. It wasn’t something I fell in love with right away. The Pacific Ocean off SoCal is never warm and only rarely really calm. That took a lot of getting used to. But the day came when the sun was bright in a cloudless blue sky and the sea was flat and so clear you could see 75 feet underwater. My apprehension evaporated. For the first time, I wasn’t afraid. For the first time, I enjoyed exploring the kelp forests — what fun!

      That dive off the Northern Channel Island of Santa Cru

z was a turning point. In the three decades since then, I have traveled to places I didn’t know existed and saw things I never dreamed I’d see: sea lions, great white sharks, manta rays, dolphins, whale sharks, turtles and many, many more, too numerous to list. I was an avid shell collector and an enthusiastic lobster hunter before discovering my true passion, underwater photography. A vocation was born of my avocation: I joined the staff of Skin Diver in 1976 and though I left the magazine in 1999, I have worked as a freelance writer/photographer for scuba publications since then. Most of my time, however, is spent writing mystery novels (unpublished as yet) featuring a scuba diving female photographer.

    On the following pages you’ll find the covers of my published books, the Skin Diver covers that featured my photos, and a few of my favorite underwater/topside photos. On the Mystery page there are pictures of several well-known writers. See if you can identify them. the clues provided.

All the images and text on all the web pages of Bonnie J. Cardone are copyrighted and protected under United States and international copyright laws. They are the exclusive property of Bonnie J. Cardone. The photographs may not be downloaded, reproduced, copied, stored, used or altered in any way without the express written permission of Bonnie J. Cardone. No images are within the Public Domain. Any unauthorized use of these images is a violation of copyright law.