Surrounded by Manta Rays! Location: Kailua-Kona, Hawaii Day 8 by Wayne & Karen Brown

We leave the dock just before sunset and arrive at the dive site before dark. Onboard with us is Divemaster Rudy. Divemaster Rudy is one of the people who discovered that the manta rays come to this particular spot at night to feed.

Manta Rays are the biggest of all the rays. They are also called devilfish. This name comes from a manta's two long flappers that stick out in front of its head, called cephalic lobes. The mantas use these lobes to direct plankton into their mouths as they swim. When these lobes are rolled up they look like devil horns!

Unlike other rays, the mantas do not eat fish and squid. Manta rays eat very tiny animals, called plankton. Mantas don't have teeth to catch their food. Manta rays are filter feeders. Manta have special parts on their gills, called gill rakers. These gill rakers filter plankton from the sea water.

The plankton travel with the ocean currents. Divermaster Rudy has discovered that the way the reef is shaped causes the plankton to be pushed into a small underwater cove. This is where the manta rays come to feed at night. We will help the mantas feed by using our dive lights to attract the plankton. Just like a light attract bugs toward it on a summer night, the same thing happens with the plankton. A bright dive light attracts the plankton and the plankton attact the manta rays! Divemaster Rudy has been diving here for so many years that the manta rays have learned that when they see a dive light there will be plankton around it!

After dark we jump into the water with Divemaster Rudy. We turn on our dive lights follow Divemaster Rudy into the inky, black ocean depths.

We level off about 25 feet underwater. In the distance we see an eerie greenish glow. As get closer we can see that the glow is actually several small glows. It looks like some kind of strange landing port for alien space ships! The small greenish glows are in a circle around a large green glow in the center of the circle.

When we reach the glows we can now see that each glow is dive light held by a scuba diver. About 10 scuba divers are kneeling on the sandy bottom here 35 feet deep underwater. In the center of the circle are 4 big lights that look light car headlights. These lights are pointing straight up toward the surface. Each diver is pointing their light up toward the larger point of light in the center of the circle that is about 20 feet in diameter.

All these lights have created a cone of light in the center of the circle of divers. The center of the cone of light has attracted millions of plankton that are swarming in the center of the circle. The light and plankton have also attracted a large school of small, silvery bait fish. These silvery bait fish have created a big, swirling, silvery cloud in the center of the light!

Moving through the silvery cloud of fish and plankton are enormous winged space ships! Actually, they are not really space ships. They are huge manta rays! These manta rays are 5-8 feet across! We count 5 manta rays!

The manta rays are black on top of their bodies. Their undersides are all white, but some have black spots, too. Unlike their cousins, the sting rays, manta rays do not have a stinger on their long tails.

We settle down to kneel on the sandy bottom and join the other divers, pointing our dive lights up to the center of the circle. We soon discover that not only are the plankton attracted to our light in the center of the circle, but the plankton are also attracted to each of our dive lights. Soon we each have a swarming cloud of plankton around our dive lights! Around our dive lights each cloud is about a foot in diameter and looks like a swarm of insects around a light in the forest at night.

The manta rays gracefully cruise through the center of the circle with their huge mouths open. On either side of the manta's mouth and at the front of the head we can see the large, foot-long flappers, called cephallic lobes.

These huge manta have seen our lights and are now swimming right at us! We can look into their huge mouths and see their gills and the back of their throats. It looks like they are going to swallow our heads! At the last second, just before they hit us, they swim up and over our heads missing us by only inches! As they dive and swoop over us a couple times we get whacked in the head by their tails. We're glad that they don't have stingers on their tails! WOW! We haven't been on a scuba dive this exciting since the last time we were diving with great white sharks in Australia!

The mantas continue to swoop over and around us and the other divers. In the center of the circle other mantas continue to feed around the light there, too. Occasionally we see that two mantas are heading toward the center of the circle from opposite directions. It looks like they are going to collide! Then, at the last second, they each swim straight up next to each other, slowly twirling up around each other like two ballet dancers!

We stay kneeling on the bottom watching the mantas in this underwater ballet. It seems like they are dancing to music. After an hour our lights start to dim as the battery get low. We switch to our backup lights. As we watch the mantas more closely we can see that some of the manta rays are injured. One of the mantas has a large rusty fish hook stuck in one of its cephalic lobes. We wish we could pull out the fish hook as the manta swims close to us, but that would probably scare and hurt the manta.

Another manta has one of its lobes almost cut off and it is dangling under its body as it swims. Divemaster Rudy told us that this manta had accidentally swam into a fishing line. As the manta swam the fishing line slowly cut into the manta's soft skin and cut into its cephalic lobe. The lobe was almost cut off by the fishing line. The cut is healed but the lobe dangles limp and useless now under the manta, hanging one by a thin strip of skin.

Before the dive divemaster Rudy told us that it seems that the mantas that come here are all injured or weak. They probably come here because they can not enough food to survive without help. The healthy mantas are probably out feeding in deeper waters. Rudy is happy to come here a few times each week and bring divers so the manta rays will be feed and stay alive.

Our dive computers are now beeping at us. We would love to stay with the mantas longer, but we are getting low on air and must return to the boat.

Tonight we are going to have a late night. We will be up late packing our bags because tomorrow we will be flying back to the island of Oahu to board our expedition ship, Clipper Odyssey, and start our search for Nemo across the Pacific Ocean.

Best Fishes,
Wayne & Karen Brown

Two manta rays swim in opposite directions over the lights held by scuba divers. These manata rays are about 8 feet wide!

With its cephalic lobes extended this manta ray swoops down on a cloud of plankton swarming over two bright lights on the bottom.

As this manta ray swims right in front of us you can see one of its eyes at the base of its cephalic lobe. The line on the bottom on its body are its gill slits.

As this manta ray swims over us you can see that its cephalic lobe on the left is dangling, limp and useless under its body. Its cephlic lobe was cut when the manta ray swam into a long fishing line.