Octopus's Garden

WHAMMMMM!!!!!

It's late January 2025 in Belize and we are in about the tiniest boat possible racing for the shore of Ambergris Caye (pronounced amber-grease key), the largest of many, many islands off the east coast of Belize's mainland. We are in the beach portion of our trip. Our expectation here was crystal clear waters that would be so calm that you can see the sand at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea teaming with multicolored tropical fish and turtles and rays and other marine life without even getting into the water. We were thinking smooth sailing; bright and warm sun; and water so beautifully aqua that it would rival what we found in the Bahamas in 2020.

Belize had other ideas. Or maybe it was just Mother Nature. A winter front had dropped over the western Caribbean. It was cold (well...cold for the beach). It was windy. It was wavy. It rained. And all that made the water angrier than we had any reasonable right to expect. That boat ride back to shore was an ordeal. We clung to the boat. We made sure that we had everything that could fly out of the boat strapped and tied down and fully secured. And every time we crested a wave, the hull of the boat slammed down on the water in a way that made you feel like the whole boat could just break in two. It didn't, but every time it dropped down onto the other side of a wave, it hit my lower back and telegraphed up my spine in a decidedly non-pleasant way.

And we thought we'd have a nice calm sunny winter getaway at the beach...

Sunny beach vacation? Not so much. I did NOT sign up for this.

We split this eight night trip pretty much equally between the jungle and the beach. The jungle on the west side of Belize was amazing and the perfect setting for some Mayan history and some incredible birdwatching. The beach portion of the week away was scheduled to be spent exploring the barrier reef off of Belize's east coast, which is supposed to be the second best barrier reef in the world (after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia). That meant lots of time in boats and lots of time in the water looking down.

Our plan in our three and a half days staying on Ambergris Caye was to spend two and a half of those days on and in the water. Day number one was planned at Hol Chan Marine Reserve (that's essentially the barrier reef) followed by a stop at Shark Ray Alley to see...well, sharks and rays. Day number two was planned for snorkeling and fishing at Mexico Rocks followed by some boat-made conch ceviche and a beach barbecue and more snorkeling after lunch / rum drinks. Day three (that was our half day) would be spent in search of manatees, which apparently leave the mangrove swamps around Ambergris Caye and spend some time in the brackish water inside the barrier reef. 

The weather had other ideas. Manatee tour? Yeah, that pretty much went off without a hitch. No weather issue there. By the time we got to our last day, the water had calmed down considerably. 

The other two days? Not smooth sailing and I mean that both literally and figuratively. Beach barbecue? Too windy. Fishing? Seas too rough (although one of the three of us and only one of us caught a non-keeper fish). Rum drinks? No rum drinks. Conch ceviche? Umm...no. Our captain found tons of conch but used the meat as bait to help us catch a non-keeper fish. Mexico Rocks? Never made it.

Day one on the seas? We did everything we planned to. Snorkeling at Hol Chan. Stopped at Shark Ray Alley and saw a ton of sharks (but no rays). Had lunch on Caye Caulker just south of Ambergris Caye. Watched tourists feed sardines to tarpon. Day two? What did we do instead of Mexico Rocks and a beach barbecue? We did the exact same thing we did on day one. 

The. Exact. Same. Thing.

Did this all work out happily for us? Actually, yes, it did. And it worked out in large part because I panicked on day one in the water when I jumped in and tried to go snorkeling.

Sharks and even more sharks at the appropriately named Shark Ray Alley.

Now, this is not the first time I've snorkeled since I started writing this blog, although admittedly, I have not done it a lot. In almost 12 years of writing these posts, I've been snorkeling on three prior trips. That's right...just three. And the last time was in 2020, just a tad more than five years ago. Did I practice swimming in all that time? Eeehhh...not so much.

So what do I do when I get into some unexpectedly choppy water off the east coast of Belize? I panicked. Too wavy. Can't breathe. Can't swim. I'm ditching this thing. Too dangerous. I bailed. And on that first day, considering we didn't go back out Hol Chan after lunch like our tour was supposed to do, my chance to see the second best barrier reef in the world was lost. Because I panicked. How stupid am I?

Now...if I'd have stuck my face in the water and started breathing through my snorkel and just followed the crowd, I'd have been fine. But I didn't do that. I got nervous with all the waves hitting me in the face with my head poking out above the surface of the water and of course I did. That's not snorkeling. That's not what you are supposed to do.

I cannot express how disappointed in myself I was. Did I get in the water with about a million (OK...maybe 20 tops) nurse sharks on the next stop? You bet I did. But the reef...uh uh. Nope!

Nurse sharks and some other fish. I love the remora on the shark in the top photo. Shark (Ray?) Alley.

So on day two when we found out we'd be doing the exact same circuit we did on day one and NOT going to Mexico Rocks and having a beach barbecue, do you think I'm disappointed? No. I was not. This was a chance to do exactly what I chickened / panicked out of the prior day. When you get a second chance in life, sometimes you just have to take it.

I just mentioned this is not my first time snorkeling since I started writing this blog. This is also not the first time I have blogged about my time on and just below the waves. Each of my prior blogs about snorkeling (Hawaii, Ecuador and the Bahamas, if you must know) have been named at least in part "Under The Sea". Hawaii was the original post and I added "Part Dos" for Ecuador and "Part Three" for the Bahamas. And in case you were wondering...yes, the posts are named after the song in The Little Mermaid.

My intent here for my Belize snorkeling is that it would become "Under The Sea, Part Four" but in the end I couldn't do it because snorkeling in Belize was that much more spectacular than any of the previous three trips. So it got "Octopus's Garden" because The Beatles are better than Alan Menken and it was the first thing that popped into my head. It's also a symbol of my lost experience on day one because our group saw an octopus on that snorkeling over the barrier reef that I missed. 

Coral and fish.

Why was snorkeling in Belize better than Hawaii, Ecuador and the Bahamas? Well how about close or close enough encounters with green turtles, eagle rays, stingrays, parrot fish (and tons of other fish) among and over the most expansive coral fields I've ever seen. In addition to a giant pile of sharks off the back of the boat and right in front of me. This was an incredible experience. And admittedly, it would have been better if I had done it twice, but I'll stop beating myself up about that issue. Probably.

In all my prior snorkel memories, I have to say I've never really seen anything that was not a fish. Well, OK, so there was a sea lion in the Galápagos but other than that, it's been just fish. Some were admittedly brightly colored and pretty impressive but they are still just fish. And yes, sharks count as fish here. 

In Belize? First ten minutes of face down time at Chan Hol and there's a green turtle munching on the sea grass at the bottom of the reef. Just right there in front of us. I know I probably sound schoolboy giddy here but this was huge for me. Not a fish. A turtle. Like 12 feet or so from me. Unbelievable. I am sure there are many, many thousands of people (if not hundreds of thousands of people) that have had a similar encounter so excuse me for going on and on about this. But...not me. Not before Belize.

Green turtle (top two pictures) and parrot fish (bottom). Just look where Marvin is pointing.

The turtle moved on. And so did we. And a couple of minutes later...sting ray. Just hiding under the sand until our guide, Marvin, spurred it into motion and it showed itself in full. Again..unbelievable. Never seen anything like that before. 20 minutes or so after that, we found an eagle ray. Two days later, we found a lobster hiding in a crevice in the coral reef we snorkeled over the top of. Not all fish. Much more than fish. This was astounding.

Now, truth be told, this is not the first time I've been snorkeling where someone I was snorkeling near or with (depending on how you view people on the same boat that I don't know) had seen a turtle. But I didn't. I also didn't see the octopus that other people we raving about on another snorkeling stop I was on. The reason I didn't see those things (or even have a chance to) is that I am pretty much blind. And when I take off my glasses, I can't see anything out of my short-sighted / near-sighted / astigmatism-plagued eyes.

This year, I could see. I bought a prescription snorkel mask.

I can't describe adequately to people who can see pretty well without glasses what a game-changer this is for me. It's literally going from not seeing to seeing. I know that sounds stupid but it's true. Anything pretty much six feet from me is totally invisible to me in an underwater environment where (let's face it...) most creatures are hiding from other creatures trying to eat them and therefore are pretty much fully camouflaged. The chances of me seeing an octopus or lobster or turtle or ray concealed with sand without a prescription mask? Pretty much nil.

So in past years when I snorkeled, if it (read: a fish) wasn't right in front of me or happened to not be visible in my GoPro videos that I had made while blindly swimming about, it pretty much got missed entirely. And it's not like these things that are camouflaged can't be missed on GoPro videos if you don't know they are there in the first place. I have to say there is pretty much no way I would have noticed the eagle ray on a video that I was blindly shooting that shows up in the third picture below. This year, I could see it with my own eyes and I got it deliberately. 

Sight. I don't know what else to say. It's pretty cool being able to see underwater. Belize has an amazing environment to snorkel. But honestly, without the prescription mask, it might have been about as good as every other place I've snorkeled in the last let's say 30 or so years.

Rays. The eagle ray is in the bottom picture. Look center left-right and just a bit higher than the midpoint up-down.

I hope that all of that sounds incredible and worth the trip down to Belize despite the less than ideal weather. And all of that doesn't even consider the manatee.

If I had made a list of creatures my size or larger that I would have been OK running into inside Belize's barrier reef (I'm assuming dolphins and humpback whales don't venture into water that shallow...) there would have been pretty much one thing on that list and that would have been a manatee. What would have been my other choices? Tiger shark? Bull shark? Crocodile? No thanks to all three of those. Manatee. That would have been it.

So I may have spoiled things a bit by writing earlier that the manatee tour we'd booked went off without a hitch but I didn't mean to imply that we actually saw one. I've been on plenty of "no hitch" nature tours that didn't yield the expected sighting of the animals we came to see. I expected the same sort of thing to happen here. I mean how big is the Caribbean Sea inside the reef and how many manatees are there hanging around Ambergris Caye and neighboring cayes?

I don't know what the exact answer to that question is but for me after snorkeling in Belize, the answer is "at least one" because we saw one. It took two stops with our captain, Sammy, (the self-proclaimed "manatee whisperer") but he got us what we went to see. Would I have preferred more than one? Sure. But one was OK. Better than none.

If the turtle and the rays and all the different types of fish were an amazing baseline exprerience (particularly with my brand new mask...), the manatee put this trip over the top. There's not a lot of action with a manatee but thankfully this one was tolerant of us swimming nearby and obviously following him and didn't turn on the jets and run. 

We spent maybe 10 minutes maximum with him. It may have been less than that. We spotted him when we first got in the water at a distance of maybe 50 to 60 feet and were able to close to within maybe 20 or less. Most of our view of him (which did include a surface for a breath of air) was from behind but he did tolerate me swimming a little alongside him which got me the first photograph below.

You can't always get what you want, especially when nature is involved but despite the unfriendly weather; the panicked and aborted first swim; and some changes in plan that on the surface seemed disappointing, this all worked out great. I am sure some of this had to do with our multiple days in and on the water but I'm certain a lot of it had to do with Belize. One more snorkeling adventure in the books, but it was certainly far superior to anything else I had ever done. Sometimes, you get lucky.

Our manatee. So cool.

So about the prescription mask...I ordered it from SeaVision USA. Based on some shopping around with various mask manufacturers, it seems like you can only get so precise on the prescription with these things but based on admittedly very limited research, SeaVision seemed to have a pretty precise range they could get to and they can do bifocals (which I theoretically need). 

To order the mask, I used a prescription from my last visit to my eye doctor but also needed the pupillary distance that I had to make a special trip back to my doctor to get (they didn't charge me for that). I thought the cost at just a bit more than $350 was extremely reasonable and the turnaround time was about four business days from order to receipt which I thought was astonishing. That's quicker than I get my glasses orders filled from my eye doctor. For what it's worth, my mom thought the cost was a lot. She clearly doesn't pay for my glasses when I get new pairs.

I can honestly see perfectly out of this mask. Like I could walk around at home with it and see if I needed to. It's pretty much the same as my glasses, and I am extremely pleased with it. I'm not sure I needed the bifocals and I'm sure they cost me a bit more. My reading vision really close up is really pretty good and I don't need to read dials or gauges the way a scuba diver might need to. Still, absolutely no complaints on this one. This product is a huge needle mover for me. I can't wait to get back in the water with some colorful fish.

Hopefully less than five years from now.

Under The Sea, Part Three

It's been too long since I've been snorkeling. Like 2016. I was lucky that year when we took trips to Hawaii and the Galápagos Islands and I managed to make it into the water on both vacations. But the last of those two trips was in August of that year. Since then? Nothing. Almost 3-1/2 years without. Too long. Way too long.

Now, to be fair here, I've taken some amazing trips in those 3-1/2 years. Machu Picchu. New Zealand. The Napa Valley. Kenya and Tanzania. Japan. New Mexico. The Yucatan. Paris. I could go on and on and on. I have also spent time on some of those trips on a boat on the water but just didn't get in. Something about crocodiles and hippos maybe. When I did get in the water in some cenotes in Mexico, the only wildlife I found were other humans.

So when it came time to start thinking about traveling in 2020 and we settled on The Bahamas as our first stop right after the new year, I was hoping there would be a chance to get a little time in the water onto our agenda. I love snorkeling. I love checking out with a simple mask and snorkel and a pair of flippers what lies beneath the waves. And if there are all sorts of multicolored fish swarming over gorgeous coral reefs then all the better. But honestly I'd settle for a few species of something slightly colorful. 

Our trips to Hawaii and the Galápagos in 2016 were each over a week long so we managed multiple trips into the water in multiple spots around the islands on each vacation. With less than three days in country in The Bahamas, we'd have no such luck this time. This year, one shot was all we would get. 

Yellowtail snappers gliding over one of the Park's underwater sculptures.

I am sure there are literally hundreds and hundreds of snorkeling spots in the 700 islands of The Bahamas. I'm also sure there are probably hundreds and hundreds of tour companies or private boats that can get you to all these spots. But considering that we were there for less than three days, we knew we wanted somewhere close to our hotel. We were determined to take advantage of all that New Providence had to offer without leaving the island.

A little research led us to Clifton Heritage National Park, an historical park offering glimpses into the way native and non-native residents of the islands lived over the centuries. By native here I mean those people living on the islands before they were "discovered" by Europeans. And by non-native, I mean slaves, who were forcibly removed from their homes in west Africa and sold as property so Europeans could have sugar in their tea. The "Heritage" in Clifton Heritage National Park means they preserve the history of those whose history nobody else (meaning the people who destroyed that history) seemed willing to preserve.

In addition to cultural insight into the islands' history, the Park also offers guided snorkeling. It's guided because there is actually something permanent and specific to see beneath the waves: an underwater sculpture garden that I wrote about in my Bahamas pirates post. But the guided aspect helped a lot here. It gave us some structure and kept us moving with the fish but it also helped us walk into the ocean with our snorkeling gear on, which is something I'd never done before. Every other time I'd been snorkeling, I just jumped on into the water from a boat. 

Clifton Heritage National Park's Ocean Atlas with a couple of blue tang and others. 

More blue tang against the light blue of The Bahamas water.

If there is one thing that is truly magical about the Bahamian waters, it's the color and the clarity. The water is the most gorgeous shade of light aqua and the sunlight filters through it in the absolute best way. It both highlighted the colors on the fish swimming all around us and also allowed me (even with my shortsightedness and my severe astigmatism) to see all the way to the sand below in up to about 25 feet of depth. That really helps.

The other thing that really helped was our guide, Kenneth. Before we set off he said we were likely to have blue tang and yellowtail snapper following us everywhere and he was totally right. I honestly wondered a little about this. I mean, aren't fish usually trying to get away from humans? They sure are when I've been snorkeling before.

But sure enough when we were almost to our first stop in the sculpture route I stopped and looked back towards my fellow snorkelers and found fish all around me inches from my face. Along with pieces of something else in the water...

...food, maybe?

Yep, Kenneth brought food. Not kidding. He was snorkeling with an orange juice (or whatever it was) bottle of liquid fish food. Spray some in the water or sprinkle some around the sculptures in the sculpture park and viola! instant swarm of fish. Cheating? Maybe. Effective for seeing fish up close? Oh yeah! For sure.

We didn't see a whole lot of different species of fish below the waves in The Bahamas. I think we just saw three that I can name: the yellowtail snapper (which we had on a plate the day before...yum!), the blue tang and the sergeant major (the pictures in this post are packed with these three). There were a few smaller fish near a very small coral reef but I cannot identify the species from my pictures. Kenneth also claims there was a stingray at one part of our tour but none of the four of us saw it and it's not on my videos of our time in the water. Not saying it wasn't there but I can't take credit for seeing it. 

The two things that were extremely memorable about our 45 minutes or so in the water off New Providence was the way the sunlight hit and lit up the fish and how amazingly close to us the fish were. Bringing food really does work very well. How come other snorkeling expeditions don't chum the waters? This was honestly the best look I've had a very limited number of fish on a snorkeling dive ever. I appreciate the experience at Clifton Heritage National Park on our quick weekend away. I'd recommend this place to anyone.

I can't imagine it's going to be 3-1/2 years to my next snorkeling trip. There's a possibility of sneaking one in later this year, maybe. If not, I'm going to have to prioritize a spot where I can take a brief dip before the end of 2022. This one was fun and it got me some of my best ever underwater pictures.

This is my favorite fish pic from The Bahamas. Kenneth's hand (distributing food) is on the left side.

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How We Did It

Clifton Heritage National Park is located on the very western tip of New Providence Island about 15 or 16 miles from downtown Nassau. When we first started researching how to get there, the Park had a website which offered pricing information and advertised rides from Nassau to the Park. Then about two weeks before our trip, the site went down and despite chatting on Facebook, emailing and calling, we could not get any information as to how to get there.

A quick look on the internet got us to Marvelous Tours who got us to the Park on their Land and Sea tour. It didn't have quite the itinerary as what I remember on the Park's website and the cost may have been a bit more but as a tour on what for us was basically a two and a half day vacation, the four hours or so we spent with Jeremy from Marvelous Tours was perfect. When we booked with them there was an offer on their website for a 10% discount if we signed up for their email notifications. We did and they haven't emailed me since but the discount was appreciated. I definitely have nothing bad to say about this company. They did right by us, plus the group size was super small at four total.

All the pictures on this post are actually screenshots of movies made on my GoPro Hero 4 Silver. I find taking pictures underwater yields less than optimal pictures considering I'm trying to keep afloat and not get swept into reefs or other snorkelers or something like that. My solution is just to put the thing on movie mode and then play the movies and capture screenshots by pausing the movie on the best screen. I think it works pretty well given the results above.

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Under The Sea, Part Dos

I've been lucky in 2016. Actually I think I've been lucky my whole life but specifically this year I've had the very great fortune to have been snorkeling in two amazing locations on our planet on two completely different trips. This past February, I discovered multicolored fish in an extinct volcano off the coast of Maui just days after watching manta rays performing underwater acrobatics at night near Kona on Hawaii's Big Island. Last month, I hit the Galápagos. Along with a mask, snorkel and fins, and of course a wetsuit which is like my 2016 snorkeling security blanket.

The Galápagos Islands and Hawaii are both volcanic archipelagos located in the Pacific Ocean. The Galápagos sit right on the equator; Hawaii is a bit further north but still below the Tropic of Cancer. But below the surface of the ocean they are quite different. The Galápagos are mostly rocky outcroppings of a giant underwater shelf sitting right below the water's surface; Hawaii's seas get much deeper much quicker. What that means is that the depths of oceans to be found right off the coasts of Hawaii's islands don't exist in the Galápagos. Everything's pretty shallow and right there for us surface swimmers to see. That's a good thing. And what a lot there is to see.

In four days in the Galápagos, we got in the water and snorkeled on three of them: once at Kicker Rock off the west coast of Isla San Cristóbal; once near Isla Plazas; and finally a swim near the south coast of Isla Santiago. The pictures in this post, once again taken with my trusty GoPro, are from our first and third snorkeling adventures. Our time near Santiago provided us with the best shots and the most amazing experience.

Sharks circling below the surface of the water at Kicker Rock.

I'll admit I had some hopes and some anxieties about snorkeling in the Galápagos. My number one hope was that we would find some hammerhead sharks to swim with; my number one fear was that we'd end up in the water with some different kinds of sharks, ones that looked decidedly more dangerous than hammerheads. I'd checked the statistics on hammerhead shark attacks and found no record of any fatal encounter with humans ever; I didn't bother doing a check on all other species and just feared the worst. Of course, what I wanted most didn't happen; what I wanted least did. Isn't life like that sometimes? And of course, it was all OK.

We didn't waste any time swimming with sharks of the non-hammerhead variety and our guide Lorenzo seemed thrilled to see them. In fact, he seemed to want to get as close to them as possible and to make us go with him. Hasn't this dude seen Jaws? I get that these sharks are a lot smaller than great whites or tiger sharks but they still look decidedly shark-like and dangerous. But sure enough, there we were in the shadow of the split down Kicker Rock looking down in the water watching sharks circle. And there were a lot of them. Sure, none of them came anywhere near me but there were not an insignificant number of them about 15 or 20 feet below my flippers. Kind of freaky.

Kicker Rock, which got its name for its resemblance to a giant boot (I don't see it honestly) didn't provide us with much good snorkeling and it wasn't because neither of the snorkels provided to me were working properly. It's a good distance out off the shore of Isla San Cristóbal and its sides below the surface are straight down, which means no reef near the top of the water to watch fish feeding. The only place with any wildlife is the nutrient-laden channel between the split rock and in the mid-day sun the shadows cast by the rock make seeing anything much in the water all but impossible for those of us with less than adequate eyesight. Probably better for diving, which I don't do. Let's move on.

If Kicker Rock was a disappointment, snorkeling off the shores of Isla Santiago was fantastic. Here we found enormous schools of multicolored fish of multiple species feeding in the reefs between 4 and 20 feet below the water. And they were everywhere you looked and the ocean was perfectly clear that day which allowed me to shoot some great videos and still photos. We also got a great look at some starfish in a number of different spots. This was by far the best snorkeling I'd had in my adult life, which admittedly has a small sample size.

And of course there were more sharks. And just like at Kicker Rock, our guide (different guide; Omar this time) seemed obsessed with finding us some sharks. And this guy was hard core about it. Like chasing sharks out from below rocks near the ocean floor hard core. We found at least two mini-schools of Galapagos sharks, which are about six or eight feet long and look decidedly like sharks, which is a little concerning in water that shallow. My only source of comfort here was looking around at all the other food around me which seemed to me to be a lot easier to handle for a creature that size, even if the alternative (me) was the slowest moving thing in the water for several miles.

Indeed the only time I really got nervous around these things was when I saw a school of about 40 or 50 fish suddenly scatter right in front of me. I thought this had to be evasive action from a predator and I was right. About five seconds later a smallish sized sea lion zoomed past me in the water, oblivious to my presence, which was incredibly cool. Yes, I swam with both sharks and sea lions this August, even if I wasn't really so much swimming with them as near them.

Our snorkeling trip that last day in the Galápagos occurred right near an area where some penguins had been seen nesting recently. It would have been such a thrill to see penguins swimming in the ocean with us but just like we missed out on the hammerheads at Kicker Rock, we didn't find any that day off Santiago. Instead we had to settle for sharks and sea lions. Not too shabby I think.

That last trip took about 45 minutes to an hour and we were swimming and surrounded by marine life pretty much the entire time. It was certainly a lot more convenient snorkeling off a boat that we were staying on than it was in Hawaii, where we had to get up before dawn or wait until the sun set to get to a boat to take us out to a good spot. As it turned out, 2016 is the year I swam with sharks for the first time. And actually, if it's the last time, I'm good with that too. I'm OK doing this once with some friendly ones and quitting while I'm ahead rather than seeking a bigger thrill.

Shark week? Maybe not. But thrilling just the same.

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.