Wednesday 30 May 2007

Manta rays rock

Wow!! I went out on a boat to swim with whale sharks yesterday. No whale sharks were found by their spotter plane (so I get a free re-run tomorrow) but we did come across a group of manta rays feeding at the surface.
I know I'm new to diving, but this was the most spectacular experience I've had yet and we only had to snorkel to make the most of it.
There were about 10-12 huge mantas - I'm talking as wide as I am tall and bigger - swimming all around us and right under us so that I thought a huge wing would flick me. They swam directly at us in lines of 2 or 3 then swam away underneath us, they were doing back flips, barrel rolls, circling us, all sorts. They seemed to be enjoying it as much as us.
We were with them for about an hour and I took over 100 photos, I have selected some of the best below. Sorry there are quite a few, I've put the better ones at the start in case you get bored.
The most magnificant, huge, graceful, beautiful underwater creatures I've ever seen. It definitely made up for the whale shark no-show.

Manta Ray, Ningaloo Reef

2 comments:

Caz said...

Not fair

Sam and Andy said...

I know, I was so lucky! It goes quite a long way to make up for not seeing any whale sharks.