I ask how everyone is doing and I get a thumbs up from everyone, not a single masked face lifts from the water, they’re entranced with the manta dance. The quick white flash of the underside of a manta wing catches my eye, as the masked face of another appears in it’s place, then a tail of another manta, and a fourth diving down in a twirl all in a matter of seconds. As we make our way away from the boat, the mantas rush in from every direction. These gentle giants won’t hurt us, and we take great care not to harm them as one guest at a time plops into the dark ocean. Getting the guests into the water is a challenge with the mantas surrounding the boat. As my head sinks below the surface I’m greeted by at least 11 mantas swooping, gliding, backrolling and colliding, it’s a manta frenzy! Sliding gently down the pontoon, I’m careful not to land on a manta rushing by. The rigid hull of the boat is immediately swarmed by mantas, it’s impossible to tell how many there are, they’re everywhere. I remind myself that these guests are up for anything was we arrive at the site. It’s just us here, and the dark water is eerie. We pull into the dark bay just in time to see another boat pull it’s blue lighted snorkel board from the water and leave. It would be a very wet ride if we went that way. Charlie agrees to go with it, it’s a shorter trip and looking to the south you see a large dark grey wall of rain. Once the lights are out of the water, they can disappear just as quickly as they appeared. Typically, we go south for our moonlight manta trip and going north is a risk – we’ll probably be the only boat out there, and there’s no guarantee the mantas stuck around. Captain Charlie is driving the boat, I ask him to go back to the north site. I ask the guests if they’re excited and they respond with an emphatic “YES!” I realize that they’re ready for anything and decide to take a risk. Mantas are wild animals, we never know.įast forward to the moment we launch our bouncy blue inflatable boat from the floating dock. I’m careful to mention we had a great first trip, but not to promise too much. Delivering a great experience is top of mind, as I wonder if the next trip will be as great as the first. They aren’t apprehensive at all, in fact, they’re eager to jump in. I observe them as we go through the check-in process getting to know each other by talking story. We get our guests back to dock and send them home smiling with the recent memories of mantas dancing in their heads, put this one down in the books as a success and get ready for the moonlight trip. Tonight was different – we had so many mantas swooping below our board, dancing as though they were in a manta ballet. I explain that this was an exceptionally good night out – sometimes we see a couple of mantas, other times we have many fly by and don’t come up close to us. You can feel the buzz on the boat, everyone is jazzed about the number of mantas we saw and how close they got. We motor into the harbor after an encounter with eight majestic mantas at our north site, appropriately named Manta Heaven. Although most guests are apprehensive, there are some who show up ready for the manta madness.
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