Mantas with a hint of shark

[tiggymalvern]

Roca Partida, 'Split Rock.' Literally a rock in the Pacific, 70 miles from the nearest land. Precipitous walls dropping away into the blue and visibility to die for. It blew my mind. There was too much footage here for one video for the day, so this is the first part.
For the morning dives, we dropped into the current-free lee of the rock and hung out with the mantas. This was our first meeting with a melanistic manta - they still have some white on the belly, but from above, they're the stealth bombers of the ocean. At the edge of the rock where it meets the current, there's a shark cleaning station. There were quite a lot of sharks around, but you got the feeling there were a lot more just out of sight.

https://youtu.be/OghrpPiBFtk

Spoiler for the next video - there were a LOT more sharks....

Comments

[tameiki]

The mantas are huge! I can't get over how big they are. You must've been so happy to be swimming with these gentle giants. At first I didn't get a good idea on size until there was a diver swimming close to them in the shot. They're truly amazing and so graceful to see.

Can't wait to see the shark video!

[tiggymalvern]

Those aren't even the biggest mantas. We saw some bigger ones on the last two days of the trip. They are amazing, and I love the fact that they seem to like us :-)