This dive is INCREDIBLE—#1 for all five of us on our whole 30-day trip to Hawaii (for all of us to agree is extremely rare). If you are scuba certified, DO this dive! If you are not certified and not afraid of being under water (or the dark), GET scuba certified for this dive! While we are newbies to diving, others with us were NOT, yet they agreed it was a #1 dive experience.

Now the basics... Many dive outfits offer this dive. We went with Jack's Diving Locker and HIGHLY recommend them. Make reservations for this dive; it's usually totally booked. They can't guarantee you will see mantas, but when we were there, they'd seen at least one, usually more, each night for the previous week. We saw 10 between our two dives.

You gather at the boat around 3pm and head to Garden Eel Cove. The first dive is a daylight dive with lots of marine life. We saw four mantas just on this dive. They don't feed during the day, but they're neat to see swimming.

Then it's a break for a quick slice of sandwich and cookies while watching the sunset. From the boat we saw whales breaching (need to go in winter for this) and dolphins. Then it's time for the real deal.

The crew has stationed lights on the ocean floor aiming upwards. This attracts plankton, which is what the mantas feed on. You dive down with your own light, no snorkel (to avoid hitting mantas), and sit in the sand in a circle around the lights to wait for mantas. For us, the mantas were already there, six of them. We sat and marveled for way too short of a time.

You are not allowed to touch the mantas, but they don't have the same rules, and once in a while, one gets blessed to be touched by them. Often they come within inches, only to turn up in a dancing dazzle. You can look right into their gaping mouths. For the latter few minutes of this dive, you go touring and get to see eels hunting (successfully) and other night creatures.

You return to the dock late; I can't remember exactly how late... I know we didn't get back to our condo till 11pm, but some of that time was spent talking and reliving. You are on such a "high" that none of us were ready to sleep for a long time. Be sure you don't have to get up early the next day!

We purchased a DVD of our dive, which was well worth the money to relive those moments. Jack's Diving Locker also has one of the founders of the Manta Pacific Research Foundation on board as an extra bonus.

I'm not sure when, but I do know we'll be back.