Sea Of Mantas

The longing feeling was so intense that minutes felt almost eternity. While others were circling impatiently, some had wondered off to see reef sharks. In no way was I going to go anywhere except to literally kneel and wait till my oxygen tank ran empty! My hubby could see the disappointment in my eyes enclosed in the tight luminous pink diving mask. A sudden flush of warmth creeps into my cheeks. Seems like it was from the far end of the room, I saw three lurky dark curtains swaying towards me. While he didn't realize that it was heading towards his back at an elevated 35 degrees above him, I hastily cling on to the boulder erratic rock smacked in the middle of the ocean floor amidst the relatively strong current, and watched with awe. Three of them, three huge mantas! The "leader" of the three must have been about 10 to 12 feet long in wing span, while the other two "followers" are probably 7 to 8 feet.

Mantas in the open ocean can grow to 20 feet and weigh nearly a ton as I have read. Unlike stingrays, they have no poisonous spines at the base of their tails, so they are not dangerous to divers. Unfortunately, they are very wary and will usually flee at the first sight of divers in the water. With that knowledge in mind, I was extremely careful not to let this chance-of-a-lifetime slip by. At one point of time, the "mama" ray was so close to me, I could just stretched out my hand and caressed it. It was really hard for me to hold back my excitement, so much so that I was practically squeezing his diving gloves out of position! As the remaining divers returned from their reef shark hunt, the mantas gracefully sway above us, graced us with two roller-coaster overturn loops and stretched out into the deep blue again. I watched with admiration yet misery inevitably creeps in -- I didn't have a chance to bit them goodbye!