#Manta ray night dive kona full

What to bring: any personal dive gear, certification card, camera, towel and sense of adventure. What's included: tanks, weights, snacks, water and a professional, experienced dive guide Where: Honokohau Marina near the mountain-side (mauka) boat ramp Times: Varies based on sunset (1-tank or 2-tank available) We're pretty confident you'll come out of the water and exclaim that it's the coolest thing you've ever seen. If you're snorkeling, you might find yourself belly to belly with a 10-foot manta. If you're lucky, your light collects lots of plankton and a manta flies right over your head. And everyone watches the manta rays perform their night-time ballet, swooping and flying through the water column. Snorkelers gather on the surface with bright lights shining down from rafts. Once it's dark, divers gather and settle in the sand around the campfire they hold up their dive lights. We don't want to kill coral while we're watching mantas!īefore sunset, dive guides put a crate of the brightest lights available (currently 33,000 lumens) to accumulate plankton. A natural sand channel allows divers to sit or kneel on the bottom without impacting the environment. Why the airport? Because it is a good, reliable site for plankton accumulation (mantas show up about 90% of the time). And thus, a show was born.Īt a site just off the airport, dive operators built an underwater “campfire” using large boulders. If divers could congregate large amounts of plankton, they could encourage manta rays to stay and feed in one area. When they held an underwater torch in place, plankton gathered in its beam. Many years ago, divers discovered that light attracts plankton.

Manta rays feed on tiny marine organisms called plankton. And Pacific Rim Divers has been taking people diving with manta rays for 25 years. Customer service was a MAJOR letdown, although we did get to view some manta rays for around 15 minutes.The Kona Manta Ray Night Dive is one of the most popular activities in Hawaii. Since the staff had said at the beginning of the boat ride that they had been working back-to-back tours all day, I would assume this is the reason why the 3 crewmembers left quickly without saying anything while we watched them walk to their vehicles or even offering to wait with us till our uber arrived. The captain snapped a quick picture of the swollen jellyfish sting from the injured and said the owner would call the next day to check on us, then walked away, but no one reached out. Since they were locals and we were not, I would assume this was offered to them. Our group wasn't offered to rebook for free, but finding out from the other group on the boat that they were offered a comp snorkel to them. Once back at the dock, Jacob, the captain, and the co-captain in training, lacked compassion. If you book this tour, ask what happens if someone gets hurt. Since this was their last boat ride of the day, all the ice had melted, so there was no ice to put on the sting swelling, and they offered very little first aid, such as warm bottled water.

#Manta ray night dive kona full

Also, the fact that we ended 45 minutes early. DecemKona Honu Divers manta ray dive kona Manta Ray Night Dive Behold the most magical experiences you may have on the Big Island The Manta Ray Night Dive is, without any doubt, the most magical and full of fun kind of experience that will always leave you wanting more. Gloves or gloves to avoid jellyfish stings would have been a good idea, so I deducted it from the rating. However, the sting worsened, and we all had to return to shore at 11:15 pm, 45 minutes earlier than planned. Seeing the manta rays was a neat experience until our guide Jacob warned us about jellyfish, which was about 15 minutes after getting into the water one of us in our group got stung on the hand and had to return to the boat. Jacob, our guide, gave us a snorkeling rundown when we arrived, got us on the boat, and gave us wetsuits. We received a text earlier in the day with all the info for our scheduled manta ray snorkel from 10 pm to 12 am. The boat trips to and fro were actually even better than the snorkeling portion, as we stopped several times to check out caves, lava tubes, formations that inspired Disney movies, a colony of escaped parrots, hammerhead sharks, and, best of all, a friendly pod of dolphins that escorted us back to the harbor! We wish we would have also booked this operator for our Manta Ray snorkel. We were a little nervous about the intimidating depth at the middle of the bay but overcame our fear and were eventually intrigued by its gorgeous deep blue hues. They even had an adorable pooch along who served as co-captain:)The bay itself was pristine, with plenty of lovely fish to watch (no turtles this time). Jacob, our snorkeling guide, was friendly, professional, and quite knowledgeable about the fascinating sights along the way. We appreciated the smallness of our group (only 6 people), the spaciousness of the boat, and the personal attention we received.

What a thoroughly enjoyable trip! From start to finish, it was full of beauty, excitement, and delightful surprises.