The Manta or Manta Ray is a character from Super Mario 64 and its remake. It resides in the level Dire, Dire Docks, where it swims in a circle around the whirlpool in the center of the entrance area. Manta leaves a trail of shimmering rings as it swims around the whirlpool wherein Mario has to swim in it five rings in a row to get a Power Star.Manta Papercraft
Manta rays eating plankton in Kona Hawaii from Steve on Vimeo.The manta ray dive has been pretty active the last couple of weeks. Here's a short video from a slow night a few months back. If you want to see what it's like on a busy night, go to my May archives, or click on the "video" label below.This video does a good job of showing the plankton that the mantas feed on. Plankton is a mix of sm
The water's finally warming up and getting to more summer-time like conditions. We've been seeing mostly 77 degrees off Kona with the occasional 79 the last couple of weeks. Today I'm cleaning the vacation rental for our next renters who come in tomorrow, then I have a night dive tonight with day trips the next several days. I thought I was going to have more time off than I wanted, but suddenly
Zeus is a 980lbs giant manta ray that was living happily at an Atlantis resort as part of a research and release program was released to the ocean the other day. Here’s a picture of mighty Zeus.
About 13ft in diameter, they had to transport him via helicopter to the ocean. He spent 3 happy years [...]
Zeus is a 980lbs giant manta ray that was living happily at an Atlantis resort as part of a research and release program was released to the ocean the other day. Here’s a picture of mighty Zeus.
About 13ft in diameter, they had to transport him via helicopter to the ocean. He spent 3 happy years [...]
We did the manta dive tonight after doing the morning trip also. I'm making this post quick, gotta hit the hay for a few hours and get up for tomorrow's charter - we've been staying quite busy despite being the slow time of year.... How slow is it you may ask... this last Saturday the only other dive charters I saw on the water were the two companies that service primarily Japanese clientele and two companies that have been here for over 25 years. Saturdays seem to be generally a slower dive day because it's a travel day or "the last full day in Kona so I'll do something other than dive" day for a lot of people. We've been going out consistantly, be we are running a bit light (as far as number of divers on the boat) often, going out with a light load beats not going out at all though.Here
Wierd little video of people snorkeling with manta rays from Steve on Vimeo. We've been pretty busy lately, I've got a lull coming for several days before the spring break rush kicks in for about a month. Last night we did a manta dive. About half of our group was divers and the other half snorkelers. I posted plenty on this before, but this is a video of what it looks like to the boat Captains during the dives. The divers are down below in about 32-34 feet of water and the mantas spend their time between the divers on the bottom and the snorkelers on the surface. If you look real hard, you'll see brief instances where there's a real bright spot directly under a group or two of the snorkelers on the left side of the video about half way in... that's actually a manta ray doing belly
Published: 27 November 2007 08:30 AMSource: The Engineer A remote-controlled 'fish', whose form and kinematics are modelled on the movement of the manta ray, has been developed by a German pneumatic drive specialist.The 'Aqua ray' (pictured below) provides a manoeuvrable, remote sensing platform with potential applications in the inspection of undersea pipelines and cables.An innovative water-hydraulic drive unit, coupled with fluidic muscles, produces smoothly flowing muscular movements. Those are then transformed into the dynamic flapping wings that propel it through the water.The ray was developed by Festo with help from Berlin-based bionics research company Evologics.It uses Festo fluidic muscles as actuators. These consist of hollow elastomer tubes with integrated woven aramide fibre
Actually one extra showed up at the very end of the dive. Bob and I were out with some customers from Oahu for the dive. They really enjoyed it and asked me to give them a heads up the next time we start seeing big numbers for a stretch so they could give that a try.Bob said the water temp had dropped on his computer by 2 degrees from the day before. That tends to happen in December when the temperature starts dropping, each new northwest swell can potentially drop it a degree or two. He saw 77 on his computer yesterday afternoon... still fairly warm but this year never really topped out too warm so it could be cool by next month.Above is a Wire Coral Goby (Bryaninops yongei?) that Pat took a picture of a few weeks back. These guys spend pretty much their entire lives living on a wire coral, adult lives anyway as I'm not sure what the larvae and juveniles do.I stayed up top for both dives so I didn't get to have any of the fun. My big excitment for the night was just hearing a co
New PADI Divemasters Wilson and Ilisoni had an unexpected visitor during their DM training dives – a Manta Ray!
The rest of the Pro Dive Taveuni team – Allan, Zoe and Manasa – were putting the boys through their paces on the House Reef when the graceful ray cruised past.
Manta rays are sometimes seen on our dive sites but to see one just 20m from our marina and in a depth of only 5m was an
The mantas have been around the last couple of nights and we're going up with a group tonight. Yesterday we had some interesting dives. We had a small group on who had to change their schedule from morning to late afternoon and wanted to do two dives right outside the harbor at a site that has a lot going on... a lot going on was definitely the case yesterday. I missed out on most of the fun because I played captain, but I did manage a "captain's dive" in between (Bob's also a licensed captain, as as long as one of us is on board at all times everything's cool). During the first dive, they were swarmed by a sizeable group of uluas (jacks), Bob said there were maybe 30-40 in the group - this is just something we don't see here, I think I've maybe seen 10-12 at a time before. Also seen over the course of the dives were leaf scorpion, a reticulated frogfish that I'm dieing to get a picture of (I couldn't find it on my dive), longfin anthias, 2 dwarf morays (along with several
I just got back from the night dive. There were only three of us operators out tonight, but there were plenty of mantas. I stayed up top, but was still able to see 2 or 3 mantas on the surface throughout the time my divers were in the water. Bob guestimated there must've been a dozen or so mantas at the site, it'll be curious to hear the videographers report in the morning to see how accurate that count was... it's been hopping lately at any rate.Here's a shot of a Flagtail Tilefish (Malacanthus brevirostris) I took last month. It's the only shot of one of these guys I've been able to get show up, they tend to dart around when you approach, often diving directly into the sand or under a rock if you get too close. Even if you can get them to stay still, because they are lightly colored and often against the sand, it's tough to expose them close to properly... this shot was more pure luck, with a bit of photoshop thrown in, than anything else. Bedtime for me. Later, Stev
That's what our group saw on one dive yesterday. I was captaining the dive so I missed out. I haven't seen a dragon moray in quite some time, I'm hoping it was at a spot it calls home and Bob can give me directions.I haven't posted in a while, been very busy. Early in the month I was afraid it would be "slow", but I'm in the latter stages of working 15 days straight with several double shifts. Bob and I were both getting tired and since we didn't have anything scheduled for tonight as of yesterday, we agreed to pass on a charter for tonight if it came up... wouldn't you know it, I got a call last night.. I hate turning away business, but at some point I have to not overwork myself and Bob. Last minute bookings are never a guarantee, especially during the busy season. I do have a couple of extra people I bring on from time to time depending on their availabilities, but with the slow season coming soon I'd be a jerk for hiring someone as a "regular" and then laying them of
Here's a short video of the Kona Hawaii manta ray night dive off the Kona airport that I shot underwater with my Olympus sp350 on Tuesday night. We work with a local videographer who takes video of our divers and snorkelers (it is broadcast quality stuff, not like what you see here) and I thought I'd poach some of her light and see if my little point-and-shoot digital cam could take the video. Turns out I was too far back and it doesn't do anywhere near as well in low light as a dedicated video camera. After a little tweaking in quicktime, I was able to at least bring up the brightness to where things show up. Pardon for all the psychedelic colors, it's not like that in real life. Aloha, Steve
This morning's e-mail said there with something like 18 rays on the dive last night. I haven't been out on the night dive this week, do have a trip or two scheduled for next week though, hope it holds up.We've had a couple of days off, so it was time to do some important maintenance work. I had the carburetor overhauled and gave the engine a tuneup, as well as the more frequent stuff (oil changes, etc). Everything runs great right now.. then again, it's a boat, I should be good for another good length of time though.Here's a little video of yellow Longnose Butterflyfish (Forcipiger longirostris), along with a few yellow tangs and such, on the reef. They spend much of thier lives poking their beaks into coral heads looking for tidbits to eat. This particular species is quite common here, but apparently they don't see it much on Oahu - they consider it to be "rare", they more often see Forcipiger flavissimus which is considered to be the common longnose butterfly. In this vid
We took our group out last night and enjoyed seeing 2 rays. This morning I had three on the boat and did a couple of nice dives. Tomorrow we're pulling a double again with a two tanker in the morning and an afternoon and evening dive later in the day.I didn't take the camera down today, and I sort of wish I had for one particular thing. I found an interesting nudibranch I hadn't see before, segmented like a blue dragon nudibranch, but it definitely was not a blue dragon nudi. It was nowhere near as frilly. Oh well, maybe I'll see another sometime in the next 7 or 8 years.Herre's a photo of a Titan Scorpionfish (Scorpaenopsis cacopsis) that was tucked away in an archway. The flash really brings out the colors on both the scorpionfish and the archway. They're tough to see. I had to point at it for almost a minute from just a few inches away and trace the outline with my fingers for one of my divers to realize what it was... not uncommon to have to do, they can be that hard t
