Diving with manta rays is very difficult to describe to the uninitiated—you can get a rather good idea of the size andgrace of these animals from the Discovery Channel—but if youhave never dived or snorkeled with them, there’s no way to convey the very alien and yet somehow calming presence of these giant elasmobranchs as they glide past you, eyeing you as if they were some kind of living UFO.  It’s hard not to believe that they’re curious about your awkward, bubbly intrusion into their blue realm, and perhaps they are: mantasarethoughtto have the largest brain-to-body ratio of any of the hundreds of species of sharks and rays.

It was in pursuit of this interaction that our boat, the Solmar V, left Cabo San Lucas at the beginning ofFebruary 2008. Sent off by an enthusiastic, if sometimes out-of-tune, Mariachi band on a 24-hour steam to our destination, the Revillagigedos Islands. This Wetpixel Expedition, led by noted underwater photographers Eric Cheng and Alex Mustard, promised to be filled with excitement: in addition to the mantas, the possible encounters included schools of hammerhead sharks, dolphins, humpback whales, and potentially whalesharks.

I had come prepared, I hoped, for the challenge of shooting big animals: a Nikon D200 housed in Light & Motion’s Titan D200 housing, along with the popular Tokina 10-17mm lens, housed behind the L&M Fisheye Dome Port. I was a little nervous that I didn’t have a chance to dive the housing before the trip; my planned local dives had to be cancelled due to other commitments. Thankfully, the ease of use of use of the housing, with its USB based control system, made these concerns unnecessary. Controlling the camera was basically as easy as it is on land, and the only problem I ran into was when my camera mysteriously changed it’s EV step from 1/3 step to 1 step, which caused the USB aperture control to become unresponsive; once this was corrected through the camera menu, it was smooth sailing for the rest of the trip.

And what a trip it was: we had great manta encounters, along with massive schools of jacks, friendly dolphins, and sharks: white-tips, silky & Galapagos, and several schools of hammerheads. We didn’t get to dive with any humpbacks, but saw plenty of breaching from the surface, and on several dives, heard their haunting calls. And on the rare occasions when the big animals didn’t come to play, it was refreshing to pull out the 105mm macro and shoot some of the smaller denizens of the rocky reefs: pufferfish, octopus, flounder, and other reef fishes were easily lit and captured thanks to the wonderfully accessible ROC strobe controls on the Titan housing.

And so it was, memories and hard drives filled with fantastic undersea imagery, that we steamed back to the mainland at the end of a wonderful week of diving. But no matter how we strived to capture the spirit of the manta with the best that modern technology has to offer, when we showed the images to our friends and loved ones back home, there was something we couldn’t quite convey: the calm alien curiosity of Manta birostris, a presence you must experience in person to appreciate.

View more pictures from the trip by clicking on the images in the gallery below:

Would you like to experience Mantas for yourself?

Join photo pros Eric Cheng and video pro Mike Veitch at Manta Fest 2008 in Yap, Micronesia, for 15 days this coming September, 2008! The Manta Fest dive package includes 14 nights' accommodation and 11 dive days, but packages of any length are available, with flexible dates.

Visit http://wetpixel.com/mantafest for more information.