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| Green Sea Turtles on the beach resting |
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| Pathway to Paradise |
The beauty of living in Hawaii is you can go on a wild, tropical vacation on a totally different island after taking a quick, 35 minute plane ride. The islands here are all unique and each one has its own reasons for spending time there. For underwater excitement, the Big Island is hard to beat. So after hearing that my dad was going to be there I hopped on a plane and headed over for a quick weekend. With only one night there I had to make a choice as to what our activity should be. While the Big Island has pretty amazing night activities like viewing lava from the active volcano and stars from Mauna Kea, the choice to go swimming with the manta rays was an easy one. I can't say enough how amazing the encounters are here with animals much bigger than me.
This was my third time doing the manta night dive in Kona. I had great success on my first two and was hoping for another big night. I was the first diver down so it was still quite dark, but my dive guide and I both noticed the lack of plankton. Both times previously the plankton had swarmed to our lights, which is great since that is what the manta rays come in search of. The mantas swoop through the water with open mouths and filter all the plankton out.
Because the plankton was so light we ended up only seeing four manta rays. They came in one by one, checked out the scene, did a few loops and then we never saw them again. It was very slow at first and then the action picked up closer to the end of the 50minute dive. All of my pictures came from one huge manta at the very end who did several loops and barrel rolls right over our heads.
There are nights where no manta rays are spotted so I still felt very lucky. I'm glad I was able to score a few pictures out of activity that was there. Now I am even more excited for next time!
Check out my first Manta Ray Night Dive experience here:
http://daimarsadventures.blogspot.com/2011/10/manta-ray-night-dive.html
And look for pictures for sale here:
www.daimarsphotos.com
There are nights where no manta rays are spotted so I still felt very lucky. I'm glad I was able to score a few pictures out of activity that was there. Now I am even more excited for next time!
You are so right. I read about this on a regular basis. Awesome post. The beauty of living in Hawaii is you can go on a wild .Don’t miss the chance to see the night life in water.
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That was insane but would've been the terrific experience I reckon. manta ray snorkel kona is the experience of the lifetime if you are on vacation there.
ReplyDeleteThat was fantastic enjoying vacation here.
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