We've had lots of mantas over the holidays and to start 2012

I took this brief video on the 23rd of December. I think there were 14 mantas that evening. It's been running anywhere from 5 to up to 25 mantas a night pretty much since then. Hoppefully it'll keep up.

Yesterday we had a blast. I had a friend that wanted to take friends out for a whale/dolphin watch. We headed up north and ran into mantas on the surface at Garden Eel Cove, then a huge school of dolphins off Makalewena. After watching the dolphins we decided to head out to sea and look for whales, about a half mile out we ran into 6-7 false killer whales (possibly pigmy killers, I can't really tell them apart at this point) and continued out to sea because we could see some splashing in the distance. turned out there was the largest school of pacific bottlenose dolphins I've ever seen out there. Usually we see 2-6 in small groups, this was dozens spread out over a good sized area. There were humpbacks whales in the mix as well. After watching that for a while we headed in to Garden Eel Cove to watch dolphins again.

We've had some gorgeous skies lately. If you check out my facebook page I've got a shot or two of the skies I took with my cell phone, it's been gorgeous.

Later,

Steve