Night Diving with Manta Rays

Here’s a small collection of photos from a recent night dive with huge Pacific Manta Rays in Kona.

Along the Kona coast of Hawaii’s Big Island is a world famous dive site called Garden Eel Cove, where huge Manta Rays routinely come in to feed on krill in 50ft of water not far from shore. At this particular site the party doesn’t start until after the sun goes down. Natural feeding behavior has been further encouraged by local dive operators who now come to this site each evening and plant a few dive lights on the rocky bottom. These lights attract krill and other tiny planktonic species which in turn attract the peaceful giants. Decades ago mantas acquired the name “devilfish”. Their massive size and bat shape suggested menace. That changed in the 1970s, when scuba divers found mantas to be gentle creatures. There are more than 70 known Manta Rays in Kona and all have names and can be identified by unique spot patterns on their underside.

When my family opted to visit the Big Island on vacation this summer, I knew I’d have to check out this dive. To be honest I didn’t have super high expectations. Due to its popularity, I imagined crowds of ungainly two legged neoprene clad creatures dominating the underwater landscape. My expectations were to some extent right on the money. It is indeed a circus atmoshephere. On the day I dove this location there were at least six other dive boats that showed up at dusk. Many of these boats unleash not just divers but teams of snorkerlers. The divers huddle on the bottom around an underwater halogen powered campfire of sorts and snorkelers float above. Everyone has a primary torch in addition to multi-color locator lights on tanks, boats and supporting equipment. It looks a bit like an underwater Las Vegas. In between the divers and snorkelers is 30ft of water column left over for the 12-16ft Mantas that are effortlessly doing vertical loops, barrel rolls and fly bys as they scoop up krill. There is a famous sting ray dive in the Cayman Islands called Sting Ray City. This dive is a bit like Sting Ray City on acid.

To my surprise the surrounding madness did not prevent from being mesmerized by the feature attraction. On some nights no Mantas bother to show up. During our dive we were lucky enough to have 8 full size females show up and put on a show.

Underwater photography is difficult to begin with. Trying to capture large moving animals at night brings the challenge to an entirely new level. As much as possible I wanted to somehow create images that revealed the elegance of these animals and none of the surrounding circus atmosphere. By no means did I do a great job but I had some modest success. I’d love to go back and try again.

What is it like?

I went on YouTube to try and find a video that is representative of the scene and not only found a video from the same night but it was shot by a diver just happened to be sitting next to me on the same boat. Here’s her great video of the dive. It includes footage of a recon dive we did in daylight before the later night dive.

Here’s an award winning photo by Randall Benton that also perfectly captures the experience of shooting Pacific Mantas.

Equipment Used

I used a Nikon D200 in a Light & Motion Titan housing with Sea & Sea YS90DX strobes and a Hartenberger Nano focus light. The focus light is a new addition to my arsenal and was absolutely indispensable. I’m not sure how you could shoot this dive with out a decent focus light.

Operator Used

I dove with Jack’s Dive Locker.

Tags: hawaii, kona, manta ray, photography, underwater

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 8:11 am and is filed under news, photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.