Giant Oceanic Mantas of the Revillagigedos Islands

[tiggymalvern]

With the fic draft done, I finally stopped slacking and finished editing a video from my dive trip over the New Year.

The Revillagigedos Islands, 240 miles plus from the tip of Baja, Mexico. A Mexican National Park and UNESCO world heritage site. A diving bucket list.
The Boiler at San Benedicto Island was the second day of diving we did, but I made the video first because the thing the Revillagigedos are most famed for is the giant oceanic mantas. I've dived with mantas off Hawai'i, the reef mantas. The smaller mantas. The mantas there are basically being fed, with lights put in the water in a cove to attract plankton, which is manta food. The mantas are eating and you just happen to be there.

The Pacific Ocean is huge. Diving at The Boiler, you hang off a precipitous wall and the mantas come. They could go anywhere, but they choose to come and check out the weird bubbling creatures, circling around you and looking you right in the eye as they pass. Some of them will hang with you for the whole dive, just because they can. I wonder what they think we are?
The Boiler would have been great dive site anyway - great wall, amazing visibility, lots of pretty fish, ledges full of white-tipped reef sharks. But it's hard to stop looking at the mantas. 1080 recommended.

https://youtu.be/hZ9EuALoRfU

Comments

[tameiki]

The mantas are gorgeous! And huge. How long were you in the water on this dive? It must've been amazing to dive with such graceful creatures. The escort fish were fun to watch, too, as they dropped off and others came to swim with the mantas. Do you know why they attract fish to swim alongside?

The white tipped sharks resting together was a revelation. I didn't know these types could stay still without forward movement to put water through their gills.

Thanks for another amazing video!

[tiggymalvern]

The mantas were amazing. People always rave about the mantas there, but I went out there more for the sharks - having done the manta dive in Hawai'i, I thought I'd seen plenty of mantas. But it's is different when they're a) bigger and b) directly interacting with you by choice.

The escort fish are black jacks and remoras. I know why those things follow sharks and rays and other large fish, because they steal some of the food they catch. Following mantas seems pointless, because the mantas eat plankton. But every now and then, one of the jacks will take a little nip out of the manta, and then the mantas put on a sudden spurt of speed!

Nurse sharks are another common species I see a lot that sleep on the bottom. Some sharks like to be different!