Day 4 - June 30th

This was a very busy day for me. I worked both in the morning and the night. My day started off at the Sheraton where I helped with intro to SCUBA lessons (another part of the company). People can sign up for a lesson in the pool where they get to experience SCUBA. Its not a certification, but it gives people the idea of what breathing underwater is like. It was somewhat slow that morning, so we got to do alot of relaxing by the pool.

I met a little friend at the sheraton, a small gecko that climbed up on one of our tanks. He was very cute, green and friendly as he posed for several pictures on the tank and some in the bushes -->

We got back to the house that afternoon and had a few hours to rest. Martina let me know that there was room that night for me to go with her on the Manta Dive at the north site, (the other one is the southern site) so that evening we gathered our gear and set out for Manta Heaven.

We reached the dive site at dusk accompanied by a very beautiful sunset and several other boats. I was surprised by the number of boats and people that dove this spot each night.

As the sun set we got ready to go in and a little bit after dark we plunged into the black water and much to our surprise there was a Manta right by our boat already as if waiting for us. It did a few backflips and turns before we had to head over to what has been dubbed the "Campfire". This is the actual dive site, they set several large, bright lights in a circle of rocks to attract the plankton (manta food: they have to eat 10% of their body weight a day, which is usually around 80-100 lbs of these teenie tiny organisms). Plankton was described to me as the "bugs" of the ocean. They are small and attracted to light, which in turn attracts the Manta Rays. All the divers gather around this circle of light and shine their lights up. That night we had two Mantas come, Sugar Ray and Koie. Koie is unique because she is missing one of her cephalic fins from getting tangled in fishing line.

The Mantas are really difficult to get a photograph of because we are diving at night so there is really not enough light to get a good exposure, but I did take some video with my digital camera, you should be able to access it through this link:

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v142/GinnyS/Hawaii/?action=view&current=MVI_4436.flv

The site requires Flash 8 or newer to play the video properly. Go to http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer to get it!

After we watched the Mantas in their graceful swim we swam around the site a little more and spotted several eels as well as a Blue Striped Butterflyfish (of which I got a pretty good picture!) Night diving is really amazing because outside of your small beam of light and that of your buddy's and the other divers you are quickly surrounded by blackness. It can definately be disorienting and a little frightening but overall it is really cool.