Some people find that they get chilled after being in the water at night, so we recommend you bring warmer dry clothes and even a hat. What to bring: any personal dive gear, certification card, camera, towel and sense of adventure. Specializing in the world famous Manta Ray Night Dive & Snorkel. What's included: tanks, weights, snacks, water and a professional, experienced dive guide Where: Honokohau Marina near the mountain-side (mauka) boat ramp

Times: Varies based on sunset (1-tank or 2-tank available) We're pretty confident you'll come out of the water and exclaim that it's the coolest thing you've ever seen. If you're snorkeling, you might find yourself belly to belly with a 10-foot manta. If you're lucky, your light collects lots of plankton and a manta flies right over your head. And everyone watches the manta rays perform their night-time ballet, swooping and flying through the water column. Snorkelers gather on the surface with bright lights shining down from rafts. Once it's dark, divers gather and settle in the sand around the campfire they hold up their dive lights. Sign in to get trip updates and message other travelers. We don't want to kill coral while we're watching mantas!īefore sunset, dive guides put a crate of the brightest lights available (currently 33,000 lumens) to accumulate plankton. Big Island Divers: Night Manta Ray dive - See 6,249 traveler reviews, 669 candid photos, and great deals for Kailua-Kona, HI, at Tripadvisor. A natural sand channel allows divers to sit or kneel on the bottom without impacting the environment.

Why the airport? Because it is a good, reliable site for plankton accumulation (mantas show up about 90% of the time). And thus, a show was born.Īt a site just off the airport, dive operators built an underwater “campfire” using large boulders. If divers could congregate large amounts of plankton, they could encourage manta rays to stay and feed in one area. When they held an underwater torch in place, plankton gathered in its beam. Many years ago, divers discovered that light attracts plankton. Manta rays feed on tiny marine organisms called plankton. And Pacific Rim Divers has been taking people diving with manta rays for 25 years. On the day the video was shot, it was not less than 12 boats with an average of 20 scuba divers or snorkelers on board waiting for the sunset.The Kona Manta Ray Night Dive is one of the most popular activities in Hawaii. In October 2017, the manta night dive was happening every night, weather permitted. Book Your Manta Trip Diving and Snorkeling with the Manta Rays of Kona could possibly be the highlight of your vacation. As a result, it is now possible to see them in both north and south locations. In 2004, the Kona Surf Hotel reopened as the Sheraton Keauhou Bay Resort & Spa, and the manta rays came back. Bringing the underwater lights in this natural feeding location was an even bigger success to see the manta rays at night. This is how he finally found Eels Garden Cove, a dive site near Kona International Airport, where this video was shot. One determined scuba diving operator, having heard about manta sightings in the north of Kona, decided to look for them. But then one day in 2000, the Kona Surf Hotel closed, the floodlights were switched off, and the manta rays went away. Hawaii Tours > Big Island > Manta Ray > Kona Manta Ray Night Dive. What was once a unique night dive once a week quickly became an everyday craze. Enjoy the Big Islands famous manta ray night snorkel experience. What happened next was accidental indirect feeding every night which conditioned the manta rays to stick around for dinnertime after the sunset.Īt the beginning of the 1990’s, the first dives were organised by scuba diving operators for the greatest pleasure of scuba diving tourists. Soon people noticed it had the effect of concentrating plankton, the favourite meal of manta rays. I had to check it out!Īt the beginning of the 1970s, floodlights were switched on at night towards the waves at the Kona Surf Hotel, in the south of Kona. While I think diving in Maui is a better choice for avid scuba divers visiting, Big Island is getting all the spotlight with the manta ray night dive in Kona. I heard and read many stories on how Kona became such a famous place about diving with manta rays at night, becoming a bucket-list dive for adventurous scuba divers worldwide.

Manta ray night dive kailua kona