Manta

Manta Ray

This is one of those dives that if I weren't there I wouldn't have believed it. I had been diving all weekend with an open water class of mine in West Palm Beach, FL. It was a Sunday afternoon and the last dive of the trip. Since it was a large class, I had a couple of assistant instructors/dive masters as well as a few experienced divers along with the group. Towards the end of the dive, as the students got low on air, we sent them up to get back on the boat. The only ones left on the bottom were a few of the more experienced divers and myself. We were burning up the last of our air screwing around on the reef. We started to signal that we would head up in a few minutes. At about the same time an entire school (is it a school of Manta Ray?) came gliding in off to my left. I was down to the last 5 minutes of tape in my camera. There were 42 or so individual Manta - I had to count on the video later. They moved effortlessly through the water, which is deceiving because they are actually moving at a good clip. I kicked my long fins into high gear and tried to catch up to get a few images on video. They soon glided off into the distance. As we did our safety stop I reviewed the video that I had just shot as I could hardly believe myself what had just happened. As we told the boat captain and dive master what had just happened they gave us that 'what-ever' look. I rewound the video again to show them.

Andrew Donn's SCUBA Diving Web Site

Critters

	Dolphins
	MantaRay
	Octopus
	Puffer
	Turtle
	Manatee
	Squid
	Jewfish

	Catch Up By the time I saw them they were beside me far off to my left. After screaming through my regulator to my buddies and making some unintelligible hand signals. I gave chase with the camera as fast as I could. Where is my scooter when I need it?
	Close I manage to get reasonably close and cheat a little with the zoom on the camera. They were all pretty small at maybe 4 or 5 feet across.
	More I've never seem more than 1 or 2 rays of any sort at any one given time. They just seemed to keep coming out of nowhere. I was in awe. Later reviewing the video I counted 42 rays!
	Speed I had to swim flat out in an attempt to catch up. They effortlessly cruised through the water they easily out paced me.
	Off They disappear off into the gloom from whence they came.