The story goes that in the early 1970s, a resort on the Big Island decided to illuminate the ocean behind the hotel with floodlights so that guests could watch the waves come in at night. The bright lights had the unintended effect of drawing in lots of plankton, which in turn had the unintended effect of drawing in giant manta rays for an easy meal. A dive shop began hosting weekly dives to observe the mantas, which soon blossomed into a nightly event with numerous shops joining the action.
The hotel closed in 2000, but the action only relocated to nearby Garden Eel Cove, a deeper location already naturally attractive to mantas, made more so by the hundreds of nightly divers and snorkelers shining their X-Files-strength flashlights into the water. Now, by night, the location is known as Manta Heaven.
We chartered with Kona Honu Divers to go to the site. I was a bit nervous about my first night dive, but everyone was assured by the team that this was "the Las Vegas of night dives," lit up brighter than the Strip. I relaxed even more when over a dozen boats gathered in the cove -- you'd stand a far greater chance of accidentally trying to surface under a boat than becoming disoriented in the dark.
We were given a nice briefing before the dive, informing us about the creatures we were soon to see. Many would have a 10 or 12 foot "wing span"; the largest, Big Bertha, was 16 feet wide. Yes, mantas have names, because the spotted patterns on their bellies are a sort of fingerprint by which divers have identified over 200 unique mantas. (And if you photographed a new one, you'd get to name it!) The females are larger than the males. Toothless and there just to suck in plankton, they wouldn't threaten the divers in any way... but they would be passing very close to you, and please don't touch them, thankyouverymuch.
We were each given a bright light, and had a glow stick attached to our tanks. (Ours would be red, to distinguish our group from the dozens of different colors used by different dive groups on site.) The program was simple: dive to the bottom, a mere 35 feet down, swim over to the "campfire" where everyone was gathered, then just kneel or sit in a line on the bottom and enjoy the show for 30 or 40 minutes.
The "campfire" was like an alien landscape.
There were spotlights everywhere, each illuminating a vortex of fish swirling toward the surface. Clusters of snorkelers hovered above, dangling from floating PVC racks like light banks in a space age kitchen.
We were wearing fairly thick wetsuits, and were thus more buoyant than expected. Sitting on the ocean floor was easier said than done, as frequent swells would start to pick us up and carry us. Our dive master Nico had the answer for this; he scooped up a few large rocks nearby and gave us each enough to rest on our laps and anchor us in place.
Finally comfortable, it was time to point the lights up.
We didn't have to wait long. Indeed, I'm not sure we had to wait at all; there were mantas all over the place, had we not been too busy fumbling with the rocks to focus our attention in the right place.
For a while, the mantas stayed at a comfortable distance. But when Nico saw that we'd become more comfortable in this truly unusual situation, he arranged a more close encounter. He had with him a few high-powered lights to position on the ocean floor, and knew just where to place them and how to angle them. Within seconds of him putting them a few feet in front of us, mantas started drifting our way.
The mantas would swim right at us, their alien maws open wide to afford a weird view all the way down their throats. But they'd always pull up to glide just inches above our heads.
Often, they'd loop around in "Top Gun" style rolls above us, or sweep in unexpected from behind.
35 minutes flew by, and soon it was time to go. We'd captured lots of clear images of those telltale manta "fingerprints"...
...but no brand new one for us to name "Ray-Cray" (our leading contender). The team we were with had identified all eight of the unique mantas we'd seen: males Blain, Doug, Cpt Mike, and Sugar; and females Shirley, Mango, Koie, and Lisa. (Now that we're back home, I've found the library where the rays are all catalogued. Perhaps at some point, I'll go through our video to see if I can pick them all out.)
After that rare and exciting adventure, it seems rather weak to mention this postscript, but after the dive, we went to Kona Brewing Company for a rather tasty dinner and a few flights of the local beers. We found several beers we liked, and probably would have gone back again to sample more if we'd had the time. Fortunately, Kona Brewing Company ships at least some of their beers here to Denver, so we can check back in at some point. In any case, it was a nice cap on a memorable day. But still more memorable days were ahead.
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