Is there a Manta Ray Season in Kona?

[friscuba]

I hadn't thought about "manta season" when planning my trip. Great question! Glad to hear from others that I'll be fine in October.

friscuba, I gather you do the airport site?

The Sheraton site is predominantly home to 2 or 3 three large catamaran snorkel operators that will take a few divers along. Most of the dive operators I am familiar with here go to the airport site, some will go to the Sheraton site when things slow down at the airport. I've only done the Sheraton site a couple times this year because it's been pretty steady and thick with mantas off Garden Eel Cove when we've been doing it.

In general there are several reasons the dive operators go to the airport site rather than the Sheraton site: (this is my opinion, but my guess is most of the operators share it)

Moorings, you don't need to drop anchor off the airport site. The south site has one or two pirate moorings and that's it so far. Other moorings are in the works, but there's lots of hoops to jump through to get them placed.

Protection from surf and current. The south site is exposed from both the south and the north, the airport site is largely protected from the south and partially protected from the north and has no current. It's also somewhat deeper so swells don't cause as many problems with surge.

Quality of the dive site. Garden Eel Cove made Scuba Diving magazines reader's choice list of best dive sites in the Pacific - BEFORE the manta dive moved up there. It's a great dive site for the late afternoon dive, and if there are no mantas it's a great night dive. The Sheraton site is boulderville, although it's nicer now that it hasn't had 8-10 anchor drops a day for several years, it's still not the dive that Garden Eel Cove is. We typically do our first dive on the way to there if we're headed that way.

Sheer numbers of mantas. The south site was the original site, then it eventually got to where they weren't showing up, the north site was "discovered" to have mantas in numbers never seen at the original site. When the Sheraton reopened the lights went on, and in about 5-6 months it got to where they consistently see a few mantas a night. I've seen reports of 10 or more mantas a couple of times there over the years. We've had 15 or more show up at the Garden Eel Cove site at least 30 times or so in the last 4 months, with just a few skunkings since late February.

Showing people mantas is what this dive's about, and the airport site is consistently good.

 

[MellieCee]

Thanks everyone for the great advice - we have a much better idea now what to do!

 

[ligersandtions]

My husband and I dove the Big Island for a week in mid-June. We shore dove from the Sheraton Hotel one morning and saw two mantas (during the day!!!). That night, we decided to go back and see if we could find them again....turns out they were doing the manta night dive there that night and we crashed the party. I have a very bright light, so we stayed about 50 feet away from those on the actual manta night dive....the mantas came over and played with us at least as much as they were with them.

If you don't want to spend the money on an unpredictable dive (though I think they have pretty good luck....but some friends went on a night where there were no mantas and were disappointed), you could always do it for free from shore.