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Manta Rays and Sharks
Our holiday coincided with a spell of unseasonal bad weather, with rough seas and overcast skies. This meant much less available light at depth, and murky conditions - not conducive to clear, sharp, crisp, David Attenborough-quality photos.
A Reef Manta Ray (Manta alfredi) at Maavaru Corner.
At Maavaru Corner there always seem to be large shoals of Blue-lined Snapper (Lutjanus kasmira).
On my first dive at this excellent dive site, we saw ten Mantas circling over the cleaning station. Here are five of them in the murk.
Another manta at Maavaru Corner.
This manta at Maavaru Corner doesn't seem at all bothered by all the divers surrounding the cleaning station - in fact they often seem to enjoy swimming immediately above you to feel your air bubbles tickling their bellies.
Harald watches a fly-past in the gloom.
Maavaru Corner is a beautiful dive site, even without the mantas. There's masses of reef fish, turtles, sharks, eagle rays - the lot. It's a manta cleaning station, and at the right time of year they congregate in large numbers to have skin parasites picked off by tiny cleaner fish. This is video I shot over three separate dives in late January 2020.
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The Panettone Manta Point dive site lives up to its name. This was the the site of my first ever Open-Water dive that I made in 1996 - and I saw a Manta then, too!
It flew around us for five or ten minutes.
A Grey Reef shark (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos) passes overhead on the edge of visibility in the murk at Maavaru Corner.
Govinda watches a White-tip Reef shark (Triaenodon obesus) at Panettone Manta Point.
A long boat-ride to the distant Hukuru Elhi Faru manta cleaning station was worth it for this - my first, and huge, Silvertip shark (Carcharhinus albimarginatus)!
Closely followed by a second huge Silvertip shark - I've had to heavily process this shot, taken in murky conditions and limited visibility, to bring out the detail, hence the colour noise. Raoul from the Watersports centre (bottom left) and Harald are also awed. Silvertips are described as "potentially dangerous".
