Manta Ray feeding

[Shaka Doug]

Hi everyone, a friend of mine just sent me a video she took of the manta night dive she went on in Kona. She saw lots of rays and was pretty blown away by the experience. She asked me a question and now I am unsure what the answer should be. Maybe some of you can help me out.

She asked "If it's NOT OK to feed fish here on Maui, how is it OK to feed Mantas on Big Island?"

Here on Maui we have groups trying to prevent any and all fish feeding. But isn't sitting on the bottom attracting food for the mantas so they can eat it almost the same thing? Isn't this upsetting their natural behavior for entertainment purpose and monetary gain? Now that the mantas are protected in Hawaii is there a new rule about the manta feeding on the night dives?

I think she opened a can of worms here and they're crawling out all over the place. I'm not sure how to answer her question now. I thought it was cool to feed the mantas and many years ago we used to feed the fish on our dive tours. Things are changing.

Can anyone shed some light on this? Are there special permits required to operate a manta night dive? If it hasn't happened yet, watch for some new legislation on this issue because the reef huggers will surely have something to say about it.

I love manta rays and the dives over there look awesome. Could it become a thing of the past one day?? I hope not.

 

[sea nmf]

I heard that the dive shops started going there because the lights from the hotel were already attracting the Mantas. So the divers are not attracting the mantas, they already go there.

 

[rockjock3]

I heard that the dive shops started going there because the lights from the hotel were already attracting the Mantas. So the divers are not attracting the mantas, they already go there.

They don't feed the mantas. The lights from shore attract plankton, which in turn the manta feed on. At least that is what they believe. The dive ops didn't come first the mantas did (as far as being at a location. The dive ops simply took adavantage of it. Nobody actually knows "for sure" why the mantas come where they come to feed. They can find no definitive explanation.

 

[friscuba]

A little manta dive history... it did start off the old Kona Surf south of Kailua (not sure of the year, before my day) under the lights they had off the hotel when divers noticed mantas feeding there. It flourished as an event for several years, often attracting 4-6 or more mantas during the times divers were there. I've heard that mantas appeared off and on much of the night, not just during the times mantas were there.

In June of '99, the manta rays disappeared for 4 solid months. In early August the dive op I worked for at the time had a late afternoon dive up near the airport and noticed a manta or two heading towards Garden Eel Cove. The crew told the business owner he should try a night dive up there and he might find mantas, he didn't care to try, they told lots of other operators at that point. A couple weeks later Eco Adventures (long gone now) wasn't at the usual spot on the usual night for a couple nights, and word got out that they'd discovered a "secret manta spot". Within days there were several boats going to the Garden Eel Cove spot.

Funny thing, the GEC spot went from 4 to 6 to 10 to 12 to so thick with mantas you had to turn off the boat lights to roll or jump in without landing on them in short order. They were getting more mantas than they'd ever seen down at the south site.

Odds are very high they'd been coming there all along. GEC is a plankton rich area...hence the Garden Eels the dive site is named for. GEC is now the primary manta site.

A friend of mine did her Master's studies on plankton in the area, including capturing and documenting of plankton. I haven't talked with her direct, but her father crewed my boat during the process and said those 2 particular spots were turning out to be more heavy in plankton than other locations they'd tested. If Matthew D. cruises by this thread he may have some input... knows the gal quite well.

In the case of the manta dive, the operators are bringing nothing into the equation, as far as feeding, other than lights. It's not an artificial or unnatural diet. The lights do concentrate the availability of the manta's natural food in a manner that they can catch more faster so I guess one could argue they are being "fed", but not in the traditional feed the fish sense.

 

[Teamcasa]

Well said Steve.

We have dived GEC twice and we only used lights to concentrate to plankton and whatever else the mantas feed on. Great care was given by the boats and crews not to otherwise disturb the manta feeding going on there.

 

[Shaka Doug]

I think I got it now. So, if the lights that have been here (for let's say 20-30 years) attract the plankton (that indirectly attracts the mantas) and the lights are man made we are not actually interfering with the mantas by introducing lights into the equation but instead we are just taking advantage of the by-product of those lights. I think I get it. The mantas have simply learned to take notice of opportunistic feeding situations improved by the addition of man made lights (be it hotel lights or diver lights in the campfire). These are the smart mantas.

This in no way constitutes feeding of mantas but instead is merely attraction of plankton. Do you think we could get in trouble for feeding the plankton next? What do they eat? Do they eat each other while they are concentrated so thick? I have no idea. Plankton is pretty much a low life form so it should be OK for us to concentrate them with lights for fun and entertainment so they can get gobbled up in heavy concentrations and it's really no big deal. There's like a squizillion plankton swimming around at any given moment so they are pretty plentiful. Whales eat plankton and they're pretty fat so what does that tell you?

Hotels are also pretty much above being blamed for altering our shorelines here in Hawaii so I think this must be completely different from actually feeding fish, right? They're really just enhancing the view of the shoreliine. That's what I'll tell my friend. We are only attracting plankton by accident, we're not really feeding the mantas...I mean really, Hello! The mantas have a choice after all. They don't have to eat the highly concentrated delicious plankton in front of our high powered lights and cameras in groups of ten to twenty animals! They could just go cruise the dark ocean depths solo instead and get a delicious meal on their own in the blackness like in the old days. They have done it that way for millions of years, right? I'm sure some of the older mantas simply ignore the lights and stick to the old methods of eating because it's more traditional and they're old fashioned like my Grandpa.

I still wonder though. It's kind of weird to me that shoreline lights are regulated in many places when it comes to sea turtles but they seem to be encouraged on the Big Island for the mantas. So, pick your animal of choice people... some are gonna be able to deal with it and others won't. Which ones are you putting your money on?

I had no idea when my friend brought this up it would bring these concepts to light. I told her it was no big deal...the mantas like us for putting light in the water for them. Simple. Some of them even hug the divers down there on the dives! And look how many people get to earn a living and enjoy this now too. It's practically an industry on it's own these days and growing steadily. I see it as a win-win for all, don't you? (wait a minute...)


Don't mind me, I just had a shot of my favorite acai juice blend and my brain is quite alert at almost 2:00 am....never the less....something here seems kind of fishy to me and I really don't know what to think...should we continue this practice or should we stop attracting plankton? There's a bunch of people who want to start the same thing here on Maui to help improve our dive tourism...I guess it would be OK... but...hmmmm...what do you guys think? Should we start a manta night dive here next?

 

[rockjock3]

I think I got it now. So, if the lights that have been here (for let's say 20-30 years) attract the plankton (that indirectly attracts the mantas) and the lights are man made we are not actually interfering with the mantas by introducing lights into the equation but instead we are just taking advantage of the by-product of those lights. I think I get it. The mantas have simply learned to take notice of opportunistic feeding situations improved by the addition of man made lights (be it hotel lights or diver lights in the campfire). These are the smart mantas.

This in no way constitutes feeding of mantas but instead is merely attraction of plankton. Do you think we could get in trouble for feeding the plankton next? What do they eat? Do they eat each other while they are concentrated so thick? I have no idea. Plankton is pretty much a low life form so it should be OK for us to concentrate them with lights for fun and entertainment so they can get gobbled up in heavy concentrations and it's really no big deal. There's like a squizillion plankton swimming around at any given moment so they are pretty plentiful. Whales eat plankton and they're pretty fat so what does that tell you?

Hotels are also pretty much above being blamed for altering our shorelines here in Hawaii so I think this must be completely different from actually feeding fish, right? They're really just enhancing the view of the shoreliine. That's what I'll tell my friend. We are only attracting plankton by accident, we're not really feeding the mantas...I mean really, Hello! The mantas have a choice after all. They don't have to eat the highly concentrated delicious plankton in front of our high powered lights and cameras in groups of ten to twenty animals! They could just go cruise the dark ocean depths solo instead and get a delicious meal on their own in the blackness like in the old days. They have done it that way for millions of years, right? I'm sure some of the older mantas simply ignore the lights and stick to the old methods of eating because it's more traditional and they're old fashioned like my Grandpa.

I still wonder though. It's kind of weird to me that shoreline lights are regulated in many places when it comes to sea turtles but they seem to be encouraged on the Big Island for the mantas. So, pick your animal of choice people... some are gonna be able to deal with it and others won't. Which ones are you putting your money on?

I had no idea when my friend brought this up it would bring these concepts to light. I told her it was no big deal...the mantas like us for putting light in the water for them. Simple. Some of them even hug the divers down there on the dives! And look how many people get to earn a living and enjoy this now too. It's practically an industry on it's own these days and growing steadily. I see it as a win-win for all, don't you? (wait a minute...)


Don't mind me, I just had a shot of my favorite acai juice blend and my brain is quite alert at almost 2:00 am....never the less....something here seems kind of fishy to me and I really don't know what to think...should we continue this practice or should we stop attracting plankton? There's a bunch of people who want to start the same thing here on Maui to help improve our dive tourism...I guess it would be OK... but...hmmmm...what do you guys think? Should we start a manta night dive here next?

Well, maybe we should kill off all humans. We do of course start affecting the world from day one of life.

The mantas did come to the original dive site with hotel lights that had been there for years. Did they come to the site because of the lights from shore or were they coming there for years before the hotels existed, maybe? I say maybe becasue the current dive site they have been using for the last several years has absolutely nothing around it. We were 100 feet from shore and there was nothing but empty land around (lava field). No hotel, motel, resort, housing, airport lights, shack, landing lights, nothing. The mantas were coming there with NO human interaction. From what I understand, like stated above, this site was discovered completely by accident.

Are we causing MORE mantas to come and feed than would naturally? Maybe. Are we killing mantas? Don't think so. Are we giving tourists a great show? Yes. Does it help some to appreciate a beautiful sea creature that might not give it a second thought otherwise? Probably. Would you rather us just simply leave the oceans and outlaw divers (because we potentially change the behavior of any animal we encounter)? Perhaps. Or maybe you would prefer we further affect the mantas by stopping the dives and just grabbing them up for tanks on land?

 

[Shaka Doug]

Whoa dude! We don't have to kill any humans man! Humans improve the planet every day.

Just to be clear here, I like and personally approve of the Manta night dives. I love Mantas too. I would like to see them doing the same thing with lights over here on Maui soon. Several people I know are trying to find a way to get this started. It would be great for business and directly competes with what's happening on the Big Island. One guy I know wants to leave lights out in a milk crate at Ulua Beach every night for months to try to get it established.

However, my friend brings up some strong arguments when I support the manta night dives as she thinks there's more than meets the eye. Just making a point and asking what you folks think about it. I never said anything about killing the mantas either. She says you have to agree, their behavior has and is being altered by this practice. It's clearly obvious when you watch them swoop in through the light beams one after another after another that they would not be doing that if the lights were not present.

Maybe we need a poll. Are manta night dives good or bad?

What if the divers went on the night dives over there and just had regular lights and swam around (like we do on most night dives) instead of placing a bunch of lights in a box shining up to the surface while they kneel around in a circle to wait and watch the show. Then we could see the mantas doing their thing naturally and no one could argue that we are feeding them.

 

[merxlin]

I just returned from Maui and did an afternoon dive to a known Manta cleaning station. Not a feeding area, but a cleaning station. It was stressed to us that the op in no way did anything to attract them there (lights, etc) and that it is done as an afternoon dive using only natural light. I was all over that because seeing them in a natural state is quite a breathtaking experience. On the night Manta dive I did in Kona at GEC, there were almost 20 rays, when 4 nights before there were none. We had the advantage of the first night of a full moon that just happen to rise right at sunset (a great view of the sun setting in the west and the moon just coming up over the hills). Timing is still everything. But the best sights for me were the groups of 2-3 rays that were free swimming that we saw on the afternoon dive. You truly got a sense of them in a more natural element.

We did not see any Mantas on the Maui afternoon dive, and that was OK with me. I figure if you want a guarantee, you go to an aquarium.

I think that as long as people are looking out for the ocean environment and asking these questions up front instead of the ooops moments we typically have after we realize the damage we've done, all should be OK. The argument could be made that any diver in the water upsets the natural balance, since we really don't belong there anyway, no matter how natural it feels to most of us.

I think your idea of night dives with handheld lights is a good one. Thanks for keeping an eye on things Doug.

 

[dbittner]

One other thing to remember is that the mantas don't always come. My only experience of the GEC manta dive involved zero mantas. While the lights may attract a lot of plankton, which encourages the mantas to come, they are still wild animals who are quite free to decide to go somewhere else.

By the way, even without the star attraction, I really enjoyed the night dive at GEC.

Peace,
Dave