Scuba Diving Under Giant Fish
By Gabi. Filed in Yap |
The big attraction for divers on YAP is the Manta Ray Dive. Our first day out, luck has it, we have just that on the agenda of the dive plan. It’s a beautiful calm morning and our local dive boat captain, Henry, steers our small skiff from the harbor through a channel of mangrove trees to the Miil Channel, cruising home, to a school of manta rays. They are gorgeous creatures with a wingspan of up to 12 feet, which glide through the waters, like graceful ballerinas. When they approach you from the front, with open mouths, as wide as a tunnel, one could almost be frightened. But then, scuba divers, or actually any fish, is not on their menu………they eat only plankton, which they scoop out of the sea.
We have actually seen these beautiful creatures before, on a night dive on the Big Island of the Hawaiian island group. At that time we really had to hold on to bottom rocks or corals, in order not to be swooped away by the immense water pressure exerted by 15-20 manta rays performing their endless ballet dance.
This time, on YAP, the pressure was not as great, since this was an open channel location and everyone had more room. The only sad aspect was that the visibility was only about 25-30 feet. Not real good, for you non divers.
On this dive, I had a terrible experience. I almost lost my digital camera, which is in a waterproof housing.
After our descent to the bottom, I noticed that my camera was not on my arm. I panicked. Not good to do at 70 feet below the surface. I sign-languaged our dive guide about my dilemma. I was astonished, he understood the problem in an instance and was off.I imagined my camera slowly ascending to the surface and drifting out to sea with the current. I continued to half-heartedly view the ballet of the mantas. Soon it was time to continue the 2nd half of our dive along the reef channel wall, back to our boat. I was very sad and actually also mad at my stupidity. I was already rationalizing, that it wasn’t really that bad to lose the camera,
since I had just placed a new CF card in and will not have lost any of my previous pictures from Australia. And who taps me on my shoulder…..our wonderful Yapese dive guide……..holding my camera. It is difficult to smile with a regulator in your mouth, but my eyes, through my mask expressed my immense gratitude. I could tell he understood. I thought I had missed taking any pictures of the mantas, but just then a couple of them came by up the channel. Amazing!
When back in the boat, the guide said I was very lucky because the current had not yet changed, the tide was still coming in and thus trapped the camera in the channel on the water surface of the Miil Channel. We gave him a nice finder’s fee, which was about 20 x his hourly wage( see Lothar’s post), which he will probably spent on more betel nuts.(see Lothar’s post) Hey, whatever makes you happy!
The second dive was to a manta cleaning station, where the mantas swoop in for a little R&R, while being cleaned off by tiny parasitic wrasses. Symbiosis, what a wonderful concept.
Friday, April 29th 2005 at 9:00 pm |
Lucky you!