All photos © Mark S. Schacht 2004.

For more than a decade, dive operators on the West Coast of the Big Island of Hawaii have been taking thousands of divers to locations where, at night, plankton gather in such quantities that they represent a unique feeding opportunity for large manta rays.

This phenomenon was first noticed just offshore of ocean front resort hotels on the Kohala and Kona coasts some years ago, where hotel lighting at night was drawing in first, huge swarms of plankton, and then second, the fabulous mantas.

Before long, dive operators were advertising and taking adventurous divers on night dives to experience the ultimate: UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL ENCOUNTERS WITH LARGE MANTAS!!!

PGD's Mark Schacht went on one of these dives with Jack's Diving Locker (out of Kona) in March of 2000. A few of his photos from that special dive trip are below...

Once the boat is at the dive site, the dive guide drops down and positions several large lights in roughly 30 feet of water...almost immediately plankton swarm toward it...drawing in small fish that begin to feed...

On board, the divers are instructed that everyone is to stay on the bottom when (and if) the manta(s) come, and no one is to touch the mantas. (Their skin is covered with a mucous-like protective layer, which touching disturbs. With thousands of divers coming to these sites each year, thousands of touchs are obviously going to do a lot of cumulative damage...)

Before long, a manta approaches the light...it's got an 8 to 10ft wingspan!!!

A hallmark of these dives is the "choice" the manta makes to come or go...this night, the manta decides to stay and begins to feed voraciously on the plankton.

Its modus operandi is to cruise through the plankton swarm illuminated by the lights, with its mouth open wide, and then make a gentle turn (over the divers who have positioned themselves in a tight circle on the bottom)...and then return to the light for another feed...

If it "chooses," the manta will keep up this activity for as long as the light continues to draw in plankton. On many dives, the feeding activity continues for an hour or more.

Many individual mantas are identifiable to the dive guides because of distinctive markings on the belly (each manta is unique in this way), as well as by other individual characteristics.

Note that the wingtip of this individual has been injured (bitten off by a tiger shark, the chief predator of mantas in Hawaiian waters?), and is rounded off...Many of the dive guides who lead these dives possess a naturalist's instinct to classify and name the individuals that have been coming for years to these same spots to feed.

When the moon is full, and/or when the moon rises early in the evening, the mantas do not need the "assist" that the divers' lights provide to enable them to easily identify swarming plankton to feed on...

If you are lucky the night you dive here, the mantas will come, and they may grace you with a very close pass, one so close in fact that he/she may even touch you...

In this particular approach, the manta came so close to me that I was able to peer into its opened mouth and see the intricate structures designed to filter out plankton from the sea...It is an awesome feeling to be this close to a wild animal who trusts that humans will do no harm...

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