Ok guys, I'm so excited to post this blog. It's probably going to be a few blogs in a row about Komodo National Park, where we jumped on a live-aboard dive boat and saw some amazing things- both on land and in the water. We had ended up missing the first day because our flights had been delayed getting into Labuanbajo, but we ended up catching up with everybody the next day for the second dive of the day. When you are already on the dive boat, you usually get in 4 dives per day because you go at 7 am, 10 am, 1 pm and 6 pm (roughly). So the first we saw of Komodo diving certainly didn't disappoint. The dive site was called Mauan, but I just remember it in my head as the Manta Dive. We must have seen 10-15 Manta Rays, including 2 melanistic and one pregnant female. Melanistic rays are black on both the top and the underside, where regular rays will have white underbellys with black spots. Each spot pattern on their underbelly is unique to that Manta Ray, and can be used to identify them, like a fingerprint.
Nemos! Leave these in the ocean, people. Sorry to get on a soap box but why did the movie "Finding Nemo" make so many people want to get a clownfish in their aquarium? Wasn't that the exact opposite message of the movie?!!
5 Mantas in one shot. Crazy!
How awesome is this? Jared owes me for the amazing pictures I took of him
Plus lots of healthy reef was great to see
Apparently I am not as photogenic
Sometimes you just have to let the amazing pictures speak for themselves. We felt so lucky to see this in real life. The reason there were so many on this dive is because Mauan is a Manta cleaning station, and the rays come here to be cleaned by smaller fish. The cleaner fish eat off parasites, dead skin, mucus and bacteria that have accumulated on the skin and gills of the Mantas. What a yummy meal for the cleaner fish. It's also great for us because the Mantas come in at a slow pace and make lots of passes over the site, giving us lots of chances to gawk at them. That's also why you see the Mantas with their cephalic fins unfurled and gill slits open- all part of typical cleaning station behaviour to help the fishes do their jobs.
That's Jared with his buddy, the Manta Ray. Note the unfurled cephalic fins. When not at a cleaning station, these would be rolled up.
That night the people running the live-aboard took us out on the little boat to check out the sunset. There is also a huge bat cave in the mangroves here, and they all exit en-masse at the same time, so if you are there at the right time you can see them all head out into the night together to leave the cave and go turn into vampires. Just kidding, they go out to hunt. Humans. I mean small rodents, reptiles and bugs!
What pretty birds in the twilight....Oh wait
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