Mostly Mantas - Puako Night Dive Nov 15 2025

This wasn't intended to be a manta dive, but my dive buddy brought along a spare light to try to attract some since there would be no moon during our dive (meaning our lights would be concentrating the plankton and more likely to attract a manta ray). We saw a small manta on our swim out as we approached the drop point, but it disappeared before we started our dive. She set the light in the sand early on the dive, and we began to swim away to look for nighttime critters when Brady Ray started feeding over the light, so we headed back to watch. After watching her for 40 minutes, we again headed out (spotting a small hawksbill turtle), but turned back after a few minutes to find Nova Ray and Celestial Ray had joined Brady Ray in feeding.

Taken with an Insta360 Ace Pro 2
Most clips used a Backscatter 3800 video light on arms on my tray plus a Sola 2500 flood spot/flood on a hand mount, but I turned those off for some to cut back on the amount of plankton that was illuminated, and just used the light in the sand or that and my dive buddy's light.