Today was the best day of the trip so far as I was able to see so many amazing things underwater. The first thing we did today was snorkel at the captain cook monument and then at the end of the day we went on our manta ray dive. Our visit to the captain cook monument is my favorite thing of the trip so far. On our way to the site in our small rubber boat we first stumbled onto a pod of Hawaiian spinner dolphins who playfully ran alongside our boat for a short while preforming their leaping spins into the air for us. Then we were surprised by a pod of short finned pilot whales who were logging or resting at the surface. The whales were also in the care of a newborn baby, so young that it’s dorsal fin had not yet fully hardened and was still a little floppy. After this amazing encounter I didn’t think that this outing could get better but then we made it to the monument. This place has the most incredible reef I’ve ever seen every look down was filled with color and life. Some of the cool fish species that I saw were peacock grouper, trumpet fish, and a terminal saddle wrasse. After this long and fun adventure I was absolutely exhausted but we still had the manta dives left, so I sucked it up and got ready to go. On our first dive we were given a tour of the reef to get acclimated to the water. On this dive I saw many garden eels which were very strange creatures sticking out of small holes in the sand. After that we didn’t see anything very special until our next dive, the manta dive. This dive has been going on in Hawaii since the 1970s when at a resort people noticed the manta rays feeding under floodlights at night so they put on tanks and checked it out. It just about that simple for my group, our dive masters put down big lights under water while snorkelers signed in lights from above creating a feeding zone for the mantas. Once my group got to the bottom I sat down and was given a rock for my lap, and then we just watched the show. We were able to see two manta rays do their amazing backflipping maneuvers underwater while they ate their plankton. We also saw a huge group of fish above us and two eels the first was frank the eel who hangs out at the manta dive to hunt the fish that come into the light. The other was on our way back to the boat which was a pleasant surprise. Overall this was the best day of the trip for me and was a ton of fun!
