decided to make the trip to Hawaii, I instantly began looking for a good dive shop. After looking around at the millions of options, I chose a company called Dive Makai – they had good schedules, small boats, and free rental gear if you dove with them for 2 days in a row! 
overall we booked 6 dives: two on Tuesday morning, one evening dive, one night Manta ray dive, and two dives on Wednesday morning….. I may have been a little too excited and overly ambitious, but that was the plan!
We woke up bright and early again (this is not normally our specialty, but apparently on vacation I’m cool with getting up for fun stuff ;) and headed to the harbor. We found our boat, and set off with our captain, our dive guide and 5 other divers. The Hawaiian waters were actually under a small craft advisory, so there was more wind and swell than usual, so our captain took us to a sheltered 
dive site. We got our briefing, squeezed into our wetsuits (even thought the water was 75-80 degrees!) and jumped off of the back of the little dive boat.We had a great couple of dives, and saw a lot of cool fish. The reefs in Hawaii aren’t that impressive on their own, and there aren’t a lot of colored corals or crazy ane
mones, but the fish were neat! And we saw eels, sea urchins, lots of butterfly fish, and cool underwater rock formations like lava arches. It was so relaxing to dive in clear, warm water, and we were both so amazed to be able to see the boat from 60-80 feet underwater. It’s so much fun to just float around under there! It’s like slowly swimming through a giant aquarium :)
We dove for 40 min
utes, took an hour break and went to another spot, then dove again. Since we finished our morning session just before lunch we headed over to the Kona Brewing Company to refuel before our evening and night dives started at 3:30pm. We did a mini-beer tasting, had some yummy food, relaxed for a bit, then headed back to the harbor 
for round 2! We all climbed back into the boat and headed to the spot where the manta rays were supposed to appear later. The premise of this dive was to dive at the site during the daytime (so you know what’s in store), then wait for the sun to set, and dive again after dark when all the cool stuff comes out!
around. By the time I finally “gracefully” wiggled into my wetsuit, they had all swam a good distance away, but I was hoping that once they knew we were underwater they would come check us out.I went straight down and stayed close to the guide, hoping he would help us find cool stuff. He pointed out the garden eel, which buried themselves in the sand and retreat when they see you 
swimming closer. He found a huge eel which another dive scared away, so we got to see the eel swim in open water, which they never do because they are always hiding in some crevice in the dark. Finally, I heard a loud metallic tapping noise – it was our dive guide tapping a metal tool on his air tank, and he was pointing into the open water past the deep drop off: THERE WERE DOLPHINS CHECKING US OUT! I swam as fast as my little fins would go straight out into the open water – probably not the best idea- but I was so mesmerized! I saw a few mommies and babies slowly and ele
gantly glide past us in the water. They made it seem so effortless and there was no way that I was ever going to be able to get to them or have any chance of keeping up with the, so out of breath I floated and watched them until they disappeared back into the blue.
We watched the sun go down, and hung out for a little while as 5 more boats pulled
alongside us.When it was dark enough we got BACK into our wetsuits, made sure all the lights were working, and headed towards the back of the boat to jump in. It was a pretty cool sight – even from the boat you could see the lights pointing up from the bottom, and if you watched long enough you could see the shadows of the giant mantas as they swam over the lights: they had arrived!
e about 20 snorkelers with lights pointed down, but on the ocean floor there was a huge circle of divers, and in the middle of the circle, in a column, was a school of fish. Circling the fish with awe-inspiring and absolutely silent grace were the mantas. These things are 10-15 feet from wing tip to wing tip and can weigh upwards of ONE THOUSAND POUNDS! (The largest known specimen was more than 25 ft across, with a weight of about 5,100 lb). They are like giant, floating VW bugs….but much cooler!
watching this giant, lit-up column of mantas. They were circling the divers and filtering the plankton out of the water with their giant funnel-like mouths. Every so often they would make a perfect vertical loop over and over again above our heads. They were so practiced and coordinated compared to us clumsy divers: they would head straight towards your face, mouths wide open, and at the very last minute before they were about to knock into you face first, they would pull up and glide effortlessly over your head, sometimes skimming the top :)
e. Possibly just the best DIVE ever. The entire time I just sat there, holding onto a rock (trying to get videos – go watch the awesome video RIGHT NOW!) in utter awe. There were about 12 of them all together, and I could have sat there forever. They bumped me, and knocked me over a few times, and I was cold and tired, but it was JUST SO FANTASTICALLY AWESOME!
d reef shark! That was super cool, but the shape of that fish is just so scary. Even though white tips are “docile,” your heart sure starts pumping when you see that silhouette and pointed fin swimming along in the darkness.
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