Once we were in the water, we waited silently, floating on the surface (getting
kicked in the head by other snorkelers). Luckily for us, our water camera
ate the entire roll of manta pictures, so we've got nothing to show from our
experience besides the stories.
We were floating there in the water, watching all the bubbles from the scuba
divers float up towards us between the beams of light from all of our flashlights
and the solid column of the campfire. When the lights went dark, we knew the
first ray had arrived. Within 10 minutes there were 14 rays in the water with
us, all doing backflip rolls over and over, gobbling up all of the plankton
in the water. As we floated on the top, the rays would continue circling,
until they were inches away from us. At points the rays were brushing up against
us mid-flip. It's really interesting having something with a foot-wide mouth
spinning closer and closer to you. One kid went straight from "interested"
to "completely flipping out" pretty quick.
If you buy me a beer, I can tell you the story in more detail, or you can
search this and find some pictures and whatnot: "Sunlight on water manta
rays campfire"
