We had been diving for 9 days straight, and the conditions were far from relaxing. The air was cold, as the season was moving from dry to wet in Mexico. The water was churning, which made moving through it a workout, but it also meant that these currents were bringing marine life to this region. After each hour-long dive, our bodies were chilled from the temperate waters, our hands clenched tightly upon surfacing. And every time we came to the surface, able to fully communicate using the spoken word, we would cheer and synchronously utter, “wowwwwwws!”
Having only started my diving journey in 2018, I’ve managed to cover quite a lot of ground in a relatively short period of time. I’ve traveled to over 30 countries in the name of diving, and have been on a handful of meaningful dive expeditions that put my skills to the test. Starting as a novice swimmer and moving to dive master status in only five years was a push in itself, let alone withstanding the changing season in Mexico while exploring San Benedicto, Socorro and the Roca Partida islands that make up the Revillagigedo Archipelago. Needless to say, I was extremely honored and humbled to be among this group diving on the last liveaboard of the season.
When I started diving, my aim was to see “as much of the big stuff as possible.” Like many of us, we want to see the action, the “gateway species,” as they are called in the science and conservation communities. The types of marine encounters that reel you in and make you appreciate our blue planet just a little bit more than you already did. If you’re becoming a diver, then you must innately give a shit about the ocean to some extent already. When you have your first oceanic encounter though, that’s when you start seeing things a little differently.
In 2019, when I started to travel for diving, I would chase encounters. And oftentimes, the experience wouldn’t net out as I had envisioned it. For example, I’d go to “Manta Point” in Indonesia, expecting to see vortexes of reef mantas, only to be met with tsunami conditions coming in from Jakarta and hardly being able to hold on to my breakfast during a drift dive on the site. Not a single manta in sight. Or, I’d make the great trek on a 10-day liveaboard to Osprey Reef, which is 346 km (215 miles) from mainland Cairns in Australia to see swarming sharks in action. With my luck, a day before arrival, we got notified the conditions were too rough and we’d have to bail.
These types of let downs were so frequent in my early diving career that I grew paranoid and began to think I was perhaps the problem. Maybe I was a real-life marine life deterrent! However, as more diving experience came under the ol’ dive belt, I realized a simple, and incredibly important truth to scuba: nature is never, ever on your time. If you think that you can time anything in nature, you’re wrong. Yes, you can have some guesses of when something MIGHT happen, but to think it WILL happen isn’t the right approach. You’re lucky if it does.
With our climate and ocean changing each year, predictions are changing as well. So what might have been “peak season” to see a certain species in the wild might not be the case anymore. We are working off of the most recent and up-to-date science out there to guide our ocean voyages and expeditions, and even with that, there’s so much about the ocean that we simply still do not know.
However, as was made evident when diving the Revillagigedo Archipelago at the bitter end of its divable season, I do believe that luck plays some small part in tandem with managing one’s expectations. I’m also a huge believer in fate, but I must digress to explain its relevance.
It was back in April 2021 that my grandmother passed away. She and I were extremely close, and spent a whole lot of time talking about nearly everything, in person when I lived in NYC and via Facetime when I was living in Perth. My grandfather (her husband of over fifty years) passed away first, and to no one’s surprise, my grandmother followed just seven weeks later. Needless to say, I was devastated, but to compound my grief, this was all amidst heavy Covid regulations. So, I was unable to even consider being with my family back in the states at the time, as I was hiding out in Tasmania, Australia when it all went down.
But just two weeks prior to her passing, we had a conversation that I still distinctly remember. I just had not understood its significance at the time it was happening. She always loved my adventures and desire to explore the weird and wild corners of the world. She obsessed over the photos I would send her, I think to some degree so that she could live vicariously through them. One call, she was telling me she always wished she had a chance to try surfing. Note that this is coming from a woman named Gladys Storcheim, who was perhaps the physical embodiment of Queens, New York. I think she could count on one hand the number of times she’d visited the beach in her whole 80+ years. She asked that, as I go on my voyages, to live life for the two of us, as this was something she never had the opportunity to do.
So with processing my grandmother’s passing, becoming a better and more skilled diver, and lowering my expectations on what the natural world “SHOULD” be giving me, things started to change. I was seeing so much more. Those big marine encounters I was craving started coming out of nowhere, totally unexpected, and even at times off season. And small marine life started to become more noticeable, wowing me in a way I never thought possible. It was as if, with her passing and my better understanding of how the natural world works, my eyes were starting to open to its true magic.
So, it was our 9th day of diving out there and the last dive of the liveaboard. We had so many outrageous encounters—from pods of dolphins to fleets of hammerheads to countless sharks circling cleaning stations to oceanic manta rays putting on a show. I could have canceled the last four dives and left totally content with how much we saw. But there was one thing I was still hoping to see above all else; something that I wasn’t expecting in the least as it’s so outrageously rare in the open ocean: the giant blank manta.
First, it’s important to note that there are reef mantas and oceanic mantas. Reef mantas (Mobula alfredi) and oceanic mantas (Mobula birostris) are two distinct species of manta rays, each with unique characteristics and habitats. Reef mantas typically inhabit coastal waters and are often found around coral reefs, lagoons, and island groups. They tend to have a smaller wingspan, reaching up to 3.5 meters, and display more social behaviors, frequently forming aggregations. In contrast, oceanic mantas are larger, with wingspans that can exceed 7 meters, and are more solitary. These giants roam the open oceans, often traveling long distances across pelagic environments. Both species are filter feeders, consuming plankton and small fish, but their differing habitats and social behaviors highlight the diverse adaptability of manta rays in marine ecosystems.
Here in Revillagigedo, there’s been 1,300 manta ray sightings dating back to 1978, with about 500 of those mantas being seen over the course of multiple years. And of that number, it’s assumed that 950+ of them are considered “chevron colored”—the standard manta coloring that we are accustomed to—and 300 of them are “black colored”, also known as melanistic. It’s assumed that the islands are home to one of the largest populations of black oceanic mantas in the world, making up one fourth of the population professional and citizen scientists have seen to date. But let’s be real, in the scheme of things, these numbers are small and your chance of encountering one of these black mantas in real time while out on a dive is slim.
And as the somewhat seasoned diver I was when showing up to Revillagigedo, I went into those last dives of the expedition with nothing on my mind but gratitude and an easygoing mentality towards whatever I may (or may not) find. As we were working our way around San Benedicto, passing a cleaning station that had up to 30 sharks swarming—including silver tips, white tips, galapagos and silkies—that’s when I saw her. My first black manta at 6:30 in the morning. She was perfect.
For some reason, I was the only one level with this massive manta based on our positioning in the water. Her eyes were level with mine. Our eyes locked as we moved in the same direction. She didn’t exert her wings and just glided effortlessly in the water, looking like she was hardly moving. Meanwhile, I was using all my strength in my legs to just barely keep up. With her massive size, she took one big flap and started moving upwards to show me her underbelly, giving me the chance to snap a shot so that maybe I could cross reference her with the Pacific Manta Research Group’s photo ID database to learn her name. Instead of pulling away from me, she just moved closer. Eyeing me the entire time.
For nearly 2 minutes we swam together—her one eye facing me, which felt like she was looking deep into my soul. I felt like I was with my grandmother again, as I imagined she was embodied in one of my all-time favorite ocean animals. One that I thought I’d never get the chance to see in my lifetime as sadly, this species has been reclassified from Vulnerable to Endangered on the IUCN Red List, as of December 2023. Trying to keep a line with this manta, without invading her space, she kept coming closer. She swooped over me, nearly touching me with her wings, slowly passing overhead and continuing on her way up to the surface.
This was one of those experiences that further validated a theory I’ve had since my grandmother's passing: that we all are part of nature, in life and death, and we are always together in some way. In spirit and certainly in the most profound of the moments when beneath the waterline. Maybe I’ll never see another black manta again. I’ll certainly never relive something quite as profound as that. But that’s the beauty of diving, there’s hopefully many more, profoundly new experiences to be had. And moments of believing I’m saying hello to my grandmother, transported to another world. I sincerely hope that you get to have one of those transformative moments when diving—in the beginning of your diving journey and well throughout.
To be continued …
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