Day 2 - June 28th

Today was another beautiful day! I was allowed to sleep in although that did not happen because i'm still not used to the time change, so I was up at 6:30 which left lots of time for reading on the porch while overlooking the town and ocean.

Looking out at the ocean I noticed how interesting it looks from far away. From my vantage point up on the volcano (we are about 1000 up from sea level) as you look out across the sea towards the horizon the ocean and sky just blur together. There is no crisp horizon line it just fuzzes together into infinity.

In the afternoon I got to sit down with Martina and learn thier system for editing, computer organization and creating the videos. Unfortunately their field is a highly competetive one in which they have been very successful through keeping many of their ways secret of a sort so that others cannot just copy them and create competition, so I cannot divulge all the interesting details of what they use and how its done. (not here anyways).

As night approached we got ready for the daily night dive with Manta Rays. The boat is smaller for divers so usually we cannot dive at this spot as interns, but we get to snorkel which is just as amazing. I donned my wetsuit, fins and snorkel after helping get our videographer into the water and set out to watch these amazing creatures feed. Manta Rays are huge (and it doesn't ever set in until you see it for real, up close) There were two feeding at the dive site, Wing Ray and Salem (I learned there are about 105 mantas along the coast and they all have names!) I lay on the surface of the water peering down into the darkness with the other snorkelers watching these graceful creatures swim easily through the water. Their wingspan was between 6-9ft and they would come up within inches of us as they did backfilps and swirls and danced among lights of the divers. In fact, one ray actually bumped my stomach as he passed, which was pretty cool! The atmosphere of this dive is pretty amazing too, image the black ocean underneath the cloudless sky, calm. You are floating on its surface and the divers below all have lights shining up from the bottom (about 20 ft down). There are also several large flood lights from the hotel nearby and the boat. These lights all attrack the plankton, on which the mantas feed and in turn attrack the manta rays. It is pretty eerie to look at because outside of the shafts of light coming from the divers and the boat the ocean is black and immense.