Kona Aggressor II - June 6-13, 2009

The first dive site was Turtle Pinnacle. We hopped in and swam just off the starboard bow to a known turtle cleaning station. Sure enough, two turtles were being cleaned (though Randy would have gone right past them if Rick hadn't pointed them out!). For the second dive the boat moved to Aquarium. Randy sat the dive out and Rick went in with no camera. We both skipped the third dive at Meadows.

We moved back to Mantaville where everyone decided to skip the fourth dive in anticipation of another manta dive that night. After dinner we found that apparently word of our previous night's encounter had gotten out as there were about half a dozen boats and a number of kayakers that had come out for the show.

We tried something a bit different and separated Rick's LED lights from the video housing, pointing them straight up in the middle of the circle of divers to attract the mantas. It definitely seemed to work, they kept swooping right above the light, gobbling up the plankton. Once again we spent almost an hour in the water with them.

After downloading pictures and video to the computer, a bunch of us went up on the top deck for a nightcap. We noticed a manta off the side of the boat doing lazy backflips over and over again. He'd switch from one side of the boat to the other, but was definitely enjoying the feast.