Under The Sea

This is my last post about my first trip to Hawaii. And I swear there's no history in this one, which will probably come as a relief to about half of the eight people who read this thing regularly.

If there was one thing I had to do in Hawaii (other than visit Volcanoes National Park, that is), it was get in the water. And not just once. Like a bunch of times. I didn't waste any time at all on this one: my feet were in the ocean hours after we landed. Less than 48 hours later, I was riding a gigantic trainer surfboard towards the Waianae shore trying to actually stand up for a few seconds. Which I managed to do. Barely. But I did it.

Surfing scratched my in-the-water itch on Oahu, which was the first island we visited. It was without question one of the best things I've ever done in my entire life, even if I wasn't all that successful at it. Sometimes, it's the journey and not the destination, or so I've heard. After Oahu, we scheduled a water activity that I knew I'd handle a whole lot better: snorkeling.

First time in a wetsuit. I like these things. They keep you warm and they float.

The last time I went snorkeling was at the Dry Tortugas National Park and it didn't really go that well, mostly because I was on an island off the coast of Florida in potential shark territory (I'm sure they are harmless) with about 12 other people (on the entire island!) early in the morning with no supervision and no practice. I swore Hawaii would be different. I'd spent the six weeks or so prior to our trip getting some of my stamina back by swimming laps at Arlington's Washington-Lee High School pool. Plus I'd be with a larger group of people in a concentrated area supervised by people generally no older than 29 years old. I knew this time I was ready.

We scheduled two snorkeling trips in our nine days in Hawaii: one off the town of Kona on The Big Island and one bright and early (or dark and early when we first set out might have been more appropriate) at Molokini Crater off the west coast of Maui. I also went armed with my brand new GoPro camera so I could record some of what I saw while I was floating on top of the water looking for fish and other creatures. So part of this post is really an opportunity to show off my practice run with my new gadget. And I think that's OK.

We boarded our first snorkeling boat in Hawaii just a bit north of where we were staying in Kailua-Kona at about 5 pm. Yep, that's not a typo, 5 pm. The plan was to sail (and I'm using sail in a metaphorical sense only since we were on a powerboat) for about an hour, wait for the sun to set completely and then all get in the water once it was dark. Sound sketchy? I thought so too but apparently we were under the watch of trained professionals and apparently you have to go at this time if you want to see manta rays feeding.

Now before you get freaked out about this being dangerous, we are talking manta rays here, not sting rays. These things have no real way to harm humans. They don't even have teeth. They eat by filtering plankton, fish larva and other sorts of small living things in the sea by just swimming into schools of these things and swallowing what they can. Plus if you are concerned about my safety, I'm sitting comfortably at home in northern Virginia blogging about all this. So there!

The feeding part of this whole thing is where we tourists come in. Apparently, the plankton that manta rays like to eat are attracted to powerful lights so all you have to do is shine some lights in the water and wait for the mantas to arrive. From there it's showtime. Just look down in the water and be amazed. Sounds simple, right? It actually is. The folks that organize these tours have some specially fabricated surfboard looking things with a PVC rail mounted around the perimeter in a rectangular arrangement. The surfboard is to keep the whole thing afloat; the rail is for gawkers like me to grab onto while we are watching the rays. The surfboard is also fitted with some powerful lights that shine down into the water to draw the plankton onto the dinner plate so to speak.

So we get to the anchoring spot; get dressed in a wetsuit; watch the sunset; don mask, snorkel and flippers; and then in the water we go. And then we just looked down and waited.

The first five minutes of our manta ray encounter was spent looking at maybe a hundred or so little fish swim back and forth in circles in the light, presumably snatching up the same creatures that the mantas were coming to devour. Then eventually we saw the topside of a manta ray maybe ten feet or so away drifting by, pretty much triangular in shape and generally black in color (or at least it looked that way in the dark ocean) with some white speckles. Some of these things are big (they can get up to about 20 feet across) and they all look extremely graceful moving through the water.

I was prepared for all that. I'd done my usual homework after all. What I wasn't prepared for what how these creatures actually feed and how close they would come to us. I figured the mantas would sort of zoom around below us for a while just gathering whatever they could scoop up by moving through the beams of light created by our guides. My expectation then was that we'd see maybe one or two of these things move into and out of the light then be gone until they decided to turn around and come back for some more of their all you can eat buffet. But that's not how they work.

When a manta moved into the column of light from where we were hanging on top of the water  they stayed there, generally starting by moving up towards the surface then rolling onto their back before looping around again. Imagine the manta ray moving in the path of a giant ferris wheel with its mouth wide open and you'll get the picture. It was incredible to see down into the mouths of these creatures as they did loop de loops in front of us. And when they reached the top of their loops and turned on their back exposing their white bellies, they were at most two feet from the surface of the water. And us. It was short but it was amazing.

These manta ray trips are almost a sure thing. The company we went with (the very imaginatively named Manta Ray Dives of Hawaii) advertise a 98% hit rate. If you go out. And it was almost too rough for us to do just that but they decided to go anyway. I'm glad they did. I wouldn't have missed this experience for the world. It was probably the second best experience we had in Hawaii (after surfing).

Snorkeling n the main crater of Molokini...

So after raving about our encounter with manta rays, our second snorkeling adventure had to be a bit of a letdown, right? Well, yes and no. Yes, because it certainly wasn't as up close and personal as watching mantas feed. No because it was just different from the night snorkel, it got us a good look at some different fish and it got us some amazing views of the sun hitting the deep deep ocean.

For our second snorkeling trip, we elected to head to Molokini, an extinct volcano with about two thirds of its perimeter above the surface of the ocean and the remaining third just below the surface. The result is a sheltered dive and snorkeling environment which doesn't feel the effects of the ocean's currents. That means some relatively calm snorkeling once you are inside the crater's perimeter. It's located about a 30 minute ride on one of the Redline Rafting Company's big red rafts from the town of Kihei on Maui's west shore.

We chose to leave for Molokini from Kihei because it's about as close to the crater as you can get and all the tours, no matter the travel time, seem to leave at about the same time. Proximity plus the speed those rafts can move would get us there before the rest of the boats showed up. And that was actually well worth it, even if it meant an earlier than 6 am start time from our hotel just north of Lahaina. We had the place to ourselves other than one or two other small boats when we first got there.

...at the submerged perimeter...

We made two stops at the crater: one well inside it and one just outside the submerged perimeter. The first stop got us a look at a number of different types of fish but they weren't that large, that colorful or that plentiful. They also weren't that close. If they were on the bottom floor of the crater, that was sometimes 20 feet or more away and when you got into shallower water, you had to be careful not to get too close to the edge of the water to avoid (a) crashing into a rocky crater top and (b) damaging any of the protected coral. I got back onto the red raft a little disappointed. I've been snorkeling in the Caribbean before. I remember that being way better.

But if the first stop was a little lackluster, the second made up for it. At its highest underwater point, the submerged edge of Molokini's crater comes to within two to three feet of the surface. That means you are floating on top of the water really close to the coral reef (again in a wetsuit so the effort to stay afloat is minimal) and the fish that are feeding off it. You can get an up close look at the fish, the coral and the anemones that live in the crags of the craters edge without any risk of getting too close to the shore because there isn't one. For me and snorkeling, closer is better. Maybe it's the fact I can't wear my glasses and can't see very far.

There were two other plusses of the second stop. First, there is a lot more movement in the water being outside the edge of the crater. You are no longer isolated from the currents and those things can really move you around a bit. Considering the almost complete lack of danger around me that day, it was a no risk way to experience some of the ocean's awesome power. And if you can ever do that with no risk, it's kind of cool.

But the best part was the view. When you are inside the crater, you are essentially inside a bowl which is about probably 30 feet deep at its center. When you are outside the crater, the ground below you drops off suddenly and steeply and you can't see where it ends. The result is a view into some deep gorgeous blue sea that goes and goes. And the best part is just letting the current carry you out from the inside of the crater's wall and just try to find the edge as it descends to the ocean floor. At some points you just can't! This stop was maybe 15 minutes but it was the best part of the boat trip for me.

I know I have to get in more GoPro practice. I'm hoping to get some in this summer. In the meantime, that's my underwater story about Hawaii. This is my last Hawaii post for this trip. Good thing because my next trip is Friday. I'd go back to Hawaii. I loved it! Especially for someone who never really wanted to go there in the first place.

...and looking over the edge, with the sun streaming from above.