Manta Ray

Just after sundown I entered the waters of Keauhou Bay. It was not the first time I had been in the water after dark fell across the ocean. I remembered the nights under a full moon. I dove off the Cosmic Muffin into the blackness of the lagoon at Nukuoro, a tiny atoll in the middle of nowhere. For a person who doesn’t like to swim in the ocean, it was a big deal. Last night, like a fish in a school, I felt insecurely protected. More isn’t necessarily merrier, but if that bigger fish was going to get me, he’d have forty other tasty snacks to chose. Odds were in my favor, I insanely reasoned.

Related to the shark, the manta ray is a fish that cruises the waters with the grace of angels descended from heaven. I had occasion to go belly to belly with one that made me look awfully small and feel very vulnerable. The giant rose from the depths, mouth gaped so I could look into the wide hatch, big enough to swallow me. I clutched the floating ring and bobbed in the choppy waves, spread eagle on the surface. Just before the manta reached me, in slow motion he rolled over exposing five pairs of gills on the white underside. His belly splattered with a pattern of black marks as distinctive to him as my figure prints are to me was less than three feet away from my belly. An experience almost too surreal.

Such a large fish, a harmless fish. I’ve seen them before. My first encounter with a ray was on Maui, back in the ‘70’s. The huge winged animal flew slowly below me. At the time, I didn’t know they ate plankton and saw me as nothing more than a sea turtle without a shell. I saw him as a prehistoric creature the Land Before Time left behind. Since then I’ve encountered hundreds of rays, mostly in Florida. Those pesky types with barbs lurk in the sand waiting for the unsuspecting tourist's misstep.

Four mantas came to the lights that attracted the food source, a cloud of plankton. The manta fed while people from all over the world floated on the surface. For close to an hour I watched a slow ballet, as the manta swam beneath me. Despite forty other people clutching the flotation ring, it was easy to be absorbed in the watery environment. The mask’s field of vision kept the arms and legs of the other humans out of my site. Except for the Sheraton’s night club music blasting Love Shak the world thirty feet on shore might have disappeared.

But I am a warm blooded animal and my wet suit can only keep me warm for so long. I hoped to be one of the last ones back on the boat. It mercilessly tossed in the swells. The familiar queasiness came to my head. I sucked down two cups of hot vegetable broth and two plain rolls, choosing blandness as my source of warmth. Why on earth I have this desire to sail to the South Pacific is a mystery, one as mysterious as the naked beauty of the manta ray.

Manta photo by Stephen Wong-stephenwong.com