Suzy and I did our manta ray night dive. We got on the ship and after we got out we were getting our gear. The guy looks at me and says that I don’t look 220. He had Jason and Jaime instead of Suzy and I. So, all my gear was for a 220 lb 6 footer. I got in the water and immediately had to hold my weight belt on. The wet suit was a half suit for snorkelers since the dive suit would have been a tad big. The BC was also too big and kept trying to float off while the weight belt would fall around my ankles. The bottom of the ocean was freezing at night in the half suit. Got tons of urchin spines in my hands and my knees got all cut up and bruised. Oh yeah, the mantas were cool. There were at least 6-8 of them out there doing flips to eat up all the plankton our lights were attracting. A few of them came right at my head to eat from my light, which didn’t help me hold still and not bash up my knees more. The glowing lights from all over were really cool. There was a really large manta there, it was probably Bertha, the largest at 16 feet across. It was about twice the size of the rest. After about 45 minutes of being down, I had sucked in about 3000 psi and had about 300 left when I got to the surface. With all the trashing, I never got calmed down. I still have a few spines stuck in each hand. We spent a few minutes after the manta show just swimming around. That was amazing. I calmed down a bit getting to move and not be surrounded by evil urchins. You can see lots at night when 50 people have flashlights. I got pictures with an underwater camera. I’ll get them developed and posted soon.
