8' manta ray, at anau dive site

It appears that manta rays are common here. The visibility at Anua wasn't the best, but four mantas swam by and around us. The mantas would just emerge out of the cloudiness, often only ten feet away by the time one of us spotted them. These things are really big. I mean, it's hard to get a sense of scale from the photos, but the largest one we saw was about eight feet from wing to wing, and it was considered a small specimen.

The second dive was back at Toopua again. This time, the current was fairly strong, and we flew along the sandy bottom, following a squadron of three eagle rays. One was very big. Eagle rays are neat looking because they look like they're smiling all the time. I found another large rock with multiple bubble-tip anemones on it. They were hosts to a bunch of domino damsels and sebae clownfish. I saw the my first juvenile sebae clownfish today, which was neat too. It was roughly half-inch in size, and was hiding within the tentacles of one of the anemones.

Luke's talking about jumping spiders. "It's bullshit, man. It's not fair. They hide in bananas, and can jump!" He's scared of them.

We were looking up at the stars tonight (just before dinner), and noticed that one of them was moving -- very quickly. It's the fastest moving satellite I've seen, drifting impatiently across the sky with a motion that is indescribably perfect. It's amazing that something that small can reflect enough sunlight to be bright from the surface of the earth.

One of my favorite things to do is to sit on the railing at the front of a fast-moving speedboat. In a lagoon, it can often feel like you are coasting on a plane of dimpled turquoise glass because the water is so calm. The only things that disrupt its glassy smoothness are the milky froth that is flung out to either side of the boat, and flying fish jetting out, coasting almost parallel to the surface of the water for what must seem (for a fish) to be an eternity, before abruptly disappearing back into the blue.