Manta Ray Night Snorkel

Wednesday, October 9, 2024. Waikoloa Beach, HI

Six of Pentacles, reversed. I’m wondering if there’s something going on with all of these reversed cards. Reversed, this card indicates a breakdown of maintaining support. This could be a reference to Gollum last night. Or the odd rumination about The Day Jobbe. Or possibly this is a representation of the aspect of our vacation that Mark referred to as "Open Wallet, Shake Well."

We woke early. Mark went for a walk and reported the Orion was at an odd-looking angle in the west. We both went for a walk and I photographed birds and plants. Mark went for a hike on the volcanoes’ saddle and a visit to a coffee plantation; I stayed at the unit and wrote (and napped).

In the late afternoon we drove to a Kona marina for an evening snorkel with manta rays. We had originally planned to take an 8 P.M. snorkel, but we were the only ones to sign up for it, so we got bunched with an earlier tour. The boat took us a little north of Kona to a bay near the airport. The cliffs were more basalt than lava. The sun was just on the horizon when we anchored. Mark and I got into the water for some free swim time before things got started, and saw small mantas skimming along the bottom of the bay.

The captains gave us pool noodles which we were to tuck by our feet. Then we were supposed to hang onto a float board decked out with 1000 lumen lights on it. The lights attracted plankton, and the mantas and other fish would come for the plankton. The idea was that one would float flat, breathe through the snorkel, and wait for the large mantas to come and barrel roll underneath one.

At first all I saw was a cone of light with plankton in it. It was a bit like meditating, although I had to stay aware of the water collecting in my snorkel so I could remember to blow it out, and a line connecting the float board to the boat that kept brushing against my foot. I’d say that many of the folks there were not in a meditative mood, and sometimes it was difficult to ignore them. Then mantas glided out of the murky waters and into the light.

They move so gracefully, and at the same time they look more like some kind of airplane than a fish or bird—or they look like a flying cloak or mantle, which I suppose is related to their name. Their horns are actually fins. At one point five mantas came up and barrel rolled underneath us; we could see their white undersides and radiator-like mouths and gills.

Then they’d swim back into the darkness, only to re-appear who-knew-when.  During their absence, I would breathe and watch a whirling spiral of silver fish dancing in the cone of light underneath the float-board.

When we got out of the water about an hour later, there was a smudge of red on the horizon where the sun had been, the moon was out, and Scorpio was chasing after Venus. My teeth chattered as I got out of a wetsuit and rash shirt—I warmed up quickly enough once I toweled off and put on a hoodie.

This really was a meditation on the creature of the deep (despite the idiotic antics of some of our more distracting fellow snorkelers), and I came away from the experience with a sense of having made contact with representative of the waters.

Afterward, we asked the crew where they went to get soup or chowder and they reacted like we were extraterrestrials. Apparently soup isn’t a thing in Kona.