Manta ray cleaning station...

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 I booked an extra 12 or so charters... that's nice, but I'm still hoping for more divers to add on to those days... gotta keep busy!

I'm stealing a couple of photos from Bob for this post. He was leading a dive the other week when a manta ray came by for a cleaning. The mantas will come to the reef and look for a cleaner wrasse. When one comes in to pick parasites off them they typically will circle around in slightly larger concentric circles in an effort to find more cleaner wrasses. Sometimes you'll see mantas with numerous wrasses working them over. If you look real hard, you can see a small wrasse just below the manta in the second photo. I belive Bob's group had the manta hang out for several minutes during this dive.

Aloha,

Steve