Mantas & more

I got picked up by Hangout Divers before the appointed time of 0800 and got to the large dive boat shortly after. I had booked online through their website that had a couple of English pages. English-speaking dive centres are hard to find in Ishigaki.

My driver and divemaster, Natsuki Yanagisako turned out to be a one-man band, but we combine with other operators onto a big boat that had perhaps 18 customers and 5 divemasters.

Being Japan, the number of people wasn’t an issue as the divers were orderly and considerate. The crew were also well-organised.

The boat was well-equipped with a toilet (complete with bidet) and a fresh water shower cubicle.

We set off exactly at 0830 for a short ride to the west of the island. Natsuki asked how many kilos of weight I’d need. I normally take 4kg but today with a full-length suit, I thought I’d need a bit more. But another divemaster chimed- in and they both thought 3kg would do me. I was unconvinced so asked that Natsuki have an extra weight on standby.

Dive 1: Loco Rock, Nagura.

With 3kg on my weight belt, I simply couldn’t descend and had to hold on to the guide rope to make my way down. Natsuki gave popped an extra belt into my BCD and the dive was uneventful till the later parts when I had to actively swim downwards to stop myself from ascending.

The highlight of this dive was a huge coral mound with a diameter perhaps of two bus lengths. Apart from that, which we saw at the beginning, there wasn’t much to keep my interest.

This is probably my first dive where hot coffee wasn’t available after. Instead we had a large tank of cold tea at our disposal.

After the first dive, we return to port to unload the used tanks and pick up fresh ones for the next dives. Despite the under-deck purpose-built grids for storing the tanks, I don’t think there was enough space for 3 tanks per diver.

Everything was done efficiently and we continued to the north of the island for our second dive within an hour of finishing our first dive (that being the surface interval).

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: Crowded but orderly dive boat as we prepared for departure.

: Loco Rock dive.

: Loco Rock dive.

: Loco Rock dive.

Dive 2: Big Cave, Sakieda.

With 4kg on me, I still had to descend by rope. Natsuki thought that 5kg would be too much and I would have to defer to his expertise.

The main point of interest of this dive was a cave. It wasn’t exactly a cave but an underwater canyon into the rocks that was partially closed in overhead.

We swam into it and spent some time exploring the shelves at various levels, discovering nothing much.

Once outside of the cave, we saw some critters and a small school of very shiny fish.

Natsuki had told me that much of the coral in the area are dead due to high water temperatures from not having typhoons in recent years. However, I still saw enough nice coral.

Unfortunately, like the first dive, I don’t consider this to be a very interesting dive.

We took lunch on board, comprising of two rice balls (with a very token topping) accompanied by a fish(?) patty and a small piece of spam. The vegetable and meatball soup was superb, making up for the lack of hot coffee.

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: Big Cave dive.

: Big Cave dive.

: Big Cave dive, in the reef area.

: Lunch after two dives.

Dive 3: Manta City, Kabira.

We moved away from our second dive site as people were still drinking their soup. I was told that at the manta site, only five boats are permitted (not sure per day or at a time), and it is important to get there early.

After parking near the dive site for a while, we readied ourselves perhaps an hour before I had expected.

For this dive, I once again worked my way down partially by holding onto the ropes. This dive was meant to be the highlight of the day where we had hoped to see manta rays.

Luck was with me and we had two sightings soon after we descended. They were probably two different mantas but could possibly be just one making two appearances.

The mound of rock and coral is meant to be a cleaning station for mantas and we could see long fish on the lower surface of the manta doing their job. While others perched there waiting for more manta sightings, we explored the area.

It wasn’t exactly an interesting area as it was just the deep blue with no coral, no fish. Returning to the mound, we saw a manta approaching from the opposite direction.

We had a long good sighting as it made its way around the mound. It went away and then came back, swimming right over me. As instructed in the briefing, mantas don’t like bubbles so I slowed my breathing right down at that point.

I completely my last dive around 1340, about an hour earlier than expected. We waited for the remaining divers, then for all the gear to be put away.

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