Bucketlist Dive- Kona Manta Rays

World Famous

I had been hearing about this dive for years. Growing up in Rhode Island studying Marine Biology I had always heard about the amazing things to see in the Pacific. Hawaii holds some really remarkable diving especially with the Manta Rays. Here are the details…

The Setup

I’ll admit I was worried that I wouldn’t last very long and would be the reason we end the dive…I am famously an air sucker, but this dive is super easy and I found it very calming as you sit on the bottom. I started with 3100 PSI and finished the dive with 1,100 PSI (this also included the time/gas used for weight checks and to wait for the group to get ready and swim to the dive site). I find that consistently they cap the dives to 40-45 minutes. I’d estimate we were on the bottom for a solid 40 ish minutes. While you’re enjoying the Manta Rays the dive master will periodically come and check your air supply. I thought it was an excellent system due to the night time conditions and helping keep focus on the Manta Rays!

Gear used in March:

-Our own personal regulators (by choice)

-Rented BCD

-Personal wetsuit (by choice) 3/2mm (we still got a little chilly at the end of the dive)

-Personal Fins (by choice)

-They supply each diver with a dive light/torch.

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You can rent all the equipment from the dive shop, but we like to use our own regulators due to issues we’ve had with other operations in the past.

We went with Big Island Divers. I can’t recommend Big Island Divers enough! I had done this dive twice now (two different boat operators) and although I haven’t tried every boat yet, I’ve been on enough boats to recognize a well run crew and an organized team. They provided an excellent dive briefing and make you feel super comfortable. I can’t wait to try their blackwater dive!

The dive site is at about 30-35 feet, they set up many very powerful underwater lights in a ‘campfire.’ The divemasters will set you up in a row or a semi circle depending on current, presence of other groups etc. I was concerned about how many people visit this site, but more people means more light which means MORE MANTAS!

The lights attract plankton and the Manta Rays are very astute. They can see the plankton and will fly gently over the lights scooping the plankton into their mouths. It was a wondrous sight indeed. These are reef mantas which are smaller than their pelagic relatives off the coast.

Mantas are now protected in Hawaii but are still fished for in many parts of the world. These creatures are highly intelligent and very graceful in the water. It’s sad to think people still hunt them elsewhere.

Photography/Videography

Now for the photography part. I didn’t have a problem bringing both strobes with me, the dive guides were very laid back about this. Although it was told to me over the phone that you won’t need external lighting because it’s very dark, I found that the strobes are a necessity and for video you can get away with basic video lights ( I didn’t even need my sola to be turned on, although next time I will use it for fill lighting). To be courteous to other divers I tried to be very selective with when I took my photos as to not blind the other divers and to allow everyone a good experience without constant flashing going on. I took the opportunity this dive to do more video as these creatures are too graceful to not capture on tape!

I have seen a lot of manta photos but I knew I wanted something different. I wanted the mantas to be separated from the water, this can be challenging due to half of the manta being black!

Gear Used:

-Isotta housing w/ Canon R5

-Dual Inon Z330 strobes (about -3 power, manual)

-Autofocus light Sola 1200

-Orcatorch mask light (to see my dials and help with gauges)

Photo-Settings

I had to bump my ISO up a lot to get the lights in the background and light up the water to separate the Manta from the blackwater. I’m rather pleased with the results. I did tease out some of the lights in photo shop and if I recall, took the exposure down a little in photoshop to get the desired effect. Eventhough the Canon R5 is a high MP camera it handles high iso just fine.

I found the shutter speed and flash combination to be enough to still freeze the manta in motion and allow enough light to enter the sensor. The stop of f/10 seemed to be enough to allow everything to be in focus.

For this shot I used the venerable first generation EF 16-35mm. I am just not entirely sold on the RF lineup, and I love the availability of old glass (plus nobody can tell the difference in the photos anyway).

The first dive I ever did was with my 8-15 fisheye. There are pros and cons to both. The fisheye really showed its benefits when the Manta would swoop over your head, the nice thing about blackwater is you can utilize the odd focal lengths of that lens (i.e. 10mm) and not worry about the black corners showing in your image. For future dives however I will stick with the 16-35mm I found it was simultaneously wide enough but had enough reach for 90% of the photos I wanted to capture. I have more artistic photos I want to try in the future but there is often surge at the bottom of this site, so the waves can knock you about, this depends on the day of course.

Video-Settings

I am still delving into video. I have had issues with the Canon R5 overheating but I think I have it figured out now. I did a mix of high speed video (4K 120fps) and normal speeds (4K 29.99 fps). The mantas can be fast but most of the time I have seen them gracefully gliding through the water.

There were a few times I wish I turned on my autofocus light to fill in the face of a manta up close. But overall I tried not to have forward facing lights on the whole time as you can blind the divers across the campfire from you. The dive operation did give us lights that you’re supposed to point up over your head and sometimes the mantas will filter feed over you as they notice the plankton!

For high speed video I used exposure compensation +2/3 to +1 stop, f/10 and auto iso. Although this did produce some grain in my photos I use Neat Video Denoise with Final Cut pro and man am I impressed with the results. Now, the video does look a tiny fuzzy but that’s because of the sheer amount of plankton in the water! See samples below:

Before Denoise, shadows boosted and exposure increased.

After Neat Video De-noise!