Getting ready for the night dive!

One of the activities we splurged on was a night scuba dive with Manta Rays on the big island of Hawaii. A large group of divers head down about 65 feet to the ocean floor at night and shine their flashlights up at the surface. At the same time, snorkelers are shining their flash lights down from on top. Hundreds of fish and plankton start to gather circling the lights and bubbles. As if that wasn’t beautiful enough, these fish and plankton attract huge beautiful (and completely harmless) manta rays, some 16 feet long! There were nine of them swimming right us! They would get so close, some of them brushing the top of our heads and flashlights. They were so beautiful and graceful, it was the most breathtaking sight!
After we got out, the manta rays followed us up to the boat, we finally got our camera out and Jared took a little video of them here. It was so incredible.

{We didn’t take an underwater camera (big mistake), so I had to grab these photos above of the manta rays off the internet here and here, but they don’t even do it justice!}