Manta Rays - Twilight dive, December 3, 2008

We booked the two-tank manta ray dive with Jack's Dive Locker, a first-rate operation in Kailua-Kona. Three manta rays joined us on the twilight dive, enabling a few available-light photo opportunities, which you can see here.

On the night dive, we were joined by about 24 divers and 6 manta rays - three large females and three smaller males. We lay on the bottom, clutching lava rocks to fight the strong surge, watching the manta rays swoop and loop in the "campfire" - lights shining upward to attract plankton, which in turn attracts the mantas. Each diver held a strong underwater flashlight to add to the glow. With the surrounding darkness, the rough surge in the water, eels swimming over and on us, the multiple divers and enormous rays (the largest we saw is estimated to be 16 feet across!), it was a sensory overload. My little camera, with no external strobe, was unable to capture the nighttime excitement, but Airey did get some video of the action.

The best part of the night was not documented in pixels - after the "campfire" was over, and the divers dispersed, we swam around on the reef for a little while, in a classic night dive. As we swam, several of the mantas joined us, still drawn to our lights. These gorgeous creatures are simply poetic in their motion, much more graceful than any land animal of equivalent size.