Manta Rays at Kawaihae

   This morning bright and early, Sandra and I loaded up the car and headed north to see our friends at Kawaihae.  It was another beautiful morning on the Big Island with a few fleecy clouds tickling the cinder cones on to of Kohala Mountain, and Maui standing forth boldly to the north.

   Hai was waiting for us as we arrived, slathering on sunscreen as he stood by his jeep.  He had hardly said hello before he was telling us that we shouldn't waste our time in the harbor, but that we should go down the steps into the ocean and look at the mantas.  While he was talking, a cooperative ray surfaced about fifteen yards off shore, the tips of its fins cutting through the water.  If you had a pronounced fear of sharks, you might have thought that tip of the manta wing was the tip of  Jaw's

Our friend Hai is the master of the Sea at Kawaihae

dorsal fin.

    Hai wasn't applying the sunscreen in anticipation of swimming with us.  Although he is a master of the lagoon, much like Tom Bombadil was master of the wild wood, he clearly delights in surfing, perhaps above anything else.  And the waves were really nice today; in addition to the manta ray fins we saw a few nice six foot faces on waves breaking less than a hundred yards off shore.

   Hai went on to tell us that when the surf was up it stirred up all the goodies in the shallows near the harbor.  Although this may not be plankton soup, the mantas seem to enjoy it.  He said that his record for a single day here at Kawaihae was to see 13 mantas.  Remember, this is the reincarnation of Tom Bombadil talking.; us mere hobbits should not aspire to such inflated numbers.

   At about this time, our dear friends Peter and Marla drove up.  Marla plied us with a big bag of fruit and we took another look at the ocean where, sure enough another manta cruised by, this time 20 yards south of the steps.

   Sandra and I went to the back of the Honda to put on our suits, expecting our friends to do the same.  As I was putting on my water hat I saw Peter and Marla standing beneath a tree.  I walked

Sandra prepares to plunge into the soup

over and Peter said, soto voce, "We're talking to our real estate agent."

    For those of you who don't recall this piece of our on going soap opera, our friends are flirting with the idea of moving back to California.  This was an agent in San Luis Obispo and it looked like the flirtation was turning into heavy petting.  Would the real estate agent get to (shudder) third base?

   Well, Sandra and I left our good friends standing in the pretty little park under the shade of a koolibah tree and headed for the sea.  Sandra had not been down the steps before and allowed that they were sufficiently painful on her delicate tootsies that they might constitute a sufficient excuse for flipper walking.  I had been down those steps before and was both not surprised and in total agreement about the potential advantage of flipper walking.   The surfers don't seem to mind, even though they are carrying their boards.  Obviously, the surfers are made of sterner stuff.

   Out in the water, we were immediately impressed by the lack of visibility.  It was low tide and in much of the area where we searched for mantas the water was only five feet deep.  Where a coral still grew, it could be less.  Snorkeling involved looking down into the soup, occasionally seeing a coral or a four spot butterfly fish.  This was no way to look for mantas.

Unfiltered photo of my manta taken at bout four feet distance.

    It took only a few minutes for us to realize that we needed to keep our goggled heads out of the water and look for a manta shadow or the tips of their wings on the surface.  Considering that we had seen them so easily from shore there was now a dearth of manta ray activity.  We swam back and forth for about fifteen minutes, mostly treading water, without seeing anything.  At this point Peter and Marla appeared on the shore showing no signs of coming on the manta a hunt.  After a couple of minutes, Peter plunged in off the ladder and swam out to us.  He wasn't there to look for devil rays, only to tell us that compared to buying a house this activity was thin soup, indeed.  They were heading back to Kapa'au to consider their real estate adventure.

    Sandra was getting discouraged.  It had been over twenty minutes and we hadn't seen a single wing tip.  Luckily things improved.  We started seeing mantas, both wing tips and large black torsos right at the surface.  Unfortunately, the visibility was so poor that even those these animals might be as

My manta. The best I can do to filter out the cloudy water.

close as ten or twelve feet, we could not see them under water.  In only a few minutes, Sandra got lucky and a manta passed right in front of her.  At three feet she was able to get a good look at its face as it swam by.

     She was satisfied and getting tired and so she went in.  I stayed out longer, attempting to approach the rays that swam nearby.  Eventually I got lucky, too.  A manta swam towards me.  I got my head in the water and was face to face with the manta. This guy had a wingspan of about eight feet, so it was big, but not huge.  By the time I got the camera ready he had swum away.  Lucky enough, he circled back and although he didn't  come face to face, I was able to get this picture at a distance of about four feet.  This may be one of the worst manta ray pictures you will ever see, but it clearly shows how cloudy the water was.

   Getting out was a bit of a challenge; at low tide the bottom step was eight inches above the surface.  Luckily I was boosted up by the incoming waves.  I did a foot over foot flipper walk to the top of the stairs and I was rewarded with a whale breeching about two hundred yard off shore.  The surfers, who were about a hundred yards out, must have had a wonderful look.

   Once up the stairs, we were appraised of a new issue.  The seaside shower, which I have previously trumpeted, was not working.  A big storm hit Kawaihae a couple weeks ago damaging the wharf.  The paper said it will cost eight million dollars to repair.  We assume that the shower is victim to the same damage and hope that it gets fixed soon.  In the meantime, we will start to bring a jug of wash water.

  One might wonder, as my son did, about the wisdom of swimming in such cloudy water.  Anyone concerned with shark attacks knows that this is one of the big risk factors.  All I can say is that there are lots of surfers swimming out through the same water.  As we prepared to leave a car full of older girls were unloading big pink inner tubes for the purpose of floating around on the cloudy water.  So I suppose at some level, all these knowledgeable locals speak for a general safety.

    At the least, Sandra and I survived unscathed.  And we both got our manta!

jeff

For those who don't know what a manta ray looks like, here is an image from the internet that approximates what I would have seen if the water had been clear.

A Manta Ray in clear water.  Not my picture.