Manta rays are essentially winged gullets, and to see one swimming at you is to stare down the mouth of Creation. But then a manta flies through the beams and I think instead of London during the Blitz.
MANTA RAY NIGHT DIVE KAILUA KONA MOVIE
The divers are instructed to sit or kneel on the bottom and hold their lights over their heads, and as I level off and begin kicking toward the area, the scene reminds me of a movie premiere when searchlights sweep the skies above Hollywood. A column of blue-green light glows from the bottom, and swirling above is a funnel of silver Hawaiian flagtails, like a small glittering tornado. Slowing sinking into the dark, with the faint, netted light rippling across the coral below, I can see in the distance the area they call the Campfire - a rough circle of lava rock on the bottom where the divers place upturned underwater torches. I bite into my regulator and squeeze the air-release button on my buoyancy compensator vest. “One lady came up crying, saying she’d had a spiritual happening.”Īt about 8 p.m., my group’s dive master, Tim Lenarsky, signals for us to descend.
“When people come back to the boat, they don’t know what to say,” Konahonu Dive Shop’s Rich Sanchez told me earlier that afternoon. This is the Big Island’s famous Manta Ray Night Dive, frequently rated one of the top 10 dives in the world and pound for pound the most surreal encounter you are ever likely to have with a big marine animal. It’s a classic symbiosis: The divers bring the lights, the lights bring the plankton, the plankton bring the mantas, and the mantas - huge but harmless creatures that swim in exquisitely slow arabesques in the spotlights, like dancers through an opium dream - bring the divers from around the world, by the thousands. Here, attracted by the abundance of light-seeking phytoplankton, the Big Island’s resident manta rays (Manta birostris) come to feed. Tonight the Honu 1’s divers are wearing green chem-sticks - the green team - to distinguish them from the three dozen or so divers from other boats that are moored around us.ĭuring the day, this area is known as Garden Eel Cove - a more-or-less routine Hawaiian coral dive - but at night the locals call it Manta Heaven.
Each diver has a couple of illuminated chem-sticks attached to his or her tank. The water is about 40 feet deep here, but just a few hundred yards to the west the Big Island’s seamount plunges into the miles-deep oceanic abyss.Ī quarter moon silhouettes the dive boat Honu 1, where the dive masters are tossing out flashlights to their clients bobbing in the dark.
MANTA RAY NIGHT DIVE KAILUA KONA FREE
I’m floating free in the blue-black ocean, a few hundred yards from Kona’s volcanic bluffs. When I hit the water, I feel all the familiar feelings, the ocean seeping into my wetsuit, the frantic bubbles on my face, the ineffable moment when the body’s gyroscope switches over from gravity to buoyancy. A very pleasant experience except for my wife who did get seasick due to some choppy seas that day.One big step off the boat and into the dark. I had a great chat with the captain on the ride back in about Hawaii conservation efforts. After getting back on the boat they had a warm water hose which was great, followed by hot chocolate. Our guide carefully took us over to and joined up with the other boards where the mantas were feeding, so we we were within a few feet of them and saw 4 different mantas on our trip that measured between 6-10 feet across). I did notice that some of the newer boards appear to be using a brighter blue light that seemed to attract more plankton (and thus mantas), although this may have just been coincidence. During the dive snorklers would swim out to an untethered board with hand rails and light which attracted the plankton. Prior to the dive there was good instruction on what, and what not, to do.
The kids loved riding on the bow and upper deck on the way out, and dove into the snacks provided (chips/cookies). Although we had our own equipment the snorkles and wetsuits provided were of good quality. The guys were great, with a jovial sense of humor that made all parts of the trip fun for us and our kids.
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