Oh man. We had signed up for a 2 dive boat trip deep into the heart of Komodo National Park, home of big fish sightings and walls of beautiful coral gardens. This trip would not disappoint. Our first dive was a wall dive with immense amounts of beautiful, healthy, vibrant coral. There was no bare patch of rock or sand. Every place that hard or soft coral could attach it had. As my friend Nate said when he saw this picture, it's "coral growing on coral growing on coral." This does give smaller creatures alot of places to hide but we still spotted some nudibranchs and a couple of beautiful leaf scorpionfish like the white one above.
Our second dive was all about the mantas. We could actually see them from the boat as we counted down our hour surface interval between dives. All of us were just itching to get back in the water to see them close up. We had no idea yet just how close we would get!
The current at this site, called Manta Point, is very strong. It's almost like being in a river. When we wanted to stop and check something out we would grab onto a rock and hold on with our fins flying out behind us. The bottom was mostly sandy except for random rocky outcroppings. It was here that we found the mantas. These 10-13ft mantas would swoop in above one of these outcroppings and then swim in place while tons of tiny little fish bolted up to pick and clean the mantas. Look closely at the pics and you can see these little fish. It reminded me of the big teacher ray in Finding Nemo when his class would hover right around him. At one point one of the mantas must have thought I was part of the rocky outcropping because it glided right over me and hovered there for a while. I am pretty sure I held my breath the entire time. I always wanted to be scuba diving and have a manta ray block out the sun above. I did not expect it to be 3 feet over my head when this finally happened. Needless to say, scuba diving in Komodo....highly recommended.
Our second dive was all about the mantas. We could actually see them from the boat as we counted down our hour surface interval between dives. All of us were just itching to get back in the water to see them close up. We had no idea yet just how close we would get! 
The current at this site, called Manta Point, is very strong. It's almost like being in a river. When we wanted to stop and check something out we would grab onto a rock and hold on with our fins flying out behind us. The bottom was mostly sandy except for random rocky outcroppings. It was here that we found the mantas. These 10-13ft mantas would swoop in above one of these outcroppings and then swim in place while tons of tiny little fish bolted up to pick and clean the mantas. Look closely at the pics and you can see these little fish. It reminded me of the big teacher ray in Finding Nemo when his class would hover right around him. At one point one of the mantas must have thought I was part of the rocky outcropping because it glided right over me and hovered there for a while. I am pretty sure I held my breath the entire time. I always wanted to be scuba diving and have a manta ray block out the sun above. I did not expect it to be 3 feet over my head when this finally happened. Needless to say, scuba diving in Komodo....highly recommended. 
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