In my short but intensive diving career, I have seen Mantas often and in various locations around Indonesia. So I was excited to go diving in the Komodo Marine Park, I hoped to see Mantas, but I did not expect anything even more breathtaking. I mean, Mantas, yay, I love Mantas.
However I was wrong. Neber have I seen that many Mantas in one dive site, and never that close. I was not allowed to touch them, but apparently the Mantas were allowed to try to touch me. They were not stressed by us, they rather enjoyed to be able to show off.
Like this one, who liked playing in the sand:
At Makasar Reef, many cleaning stations are distributed over a broken coral plain. Mantas queue up for cleaning like we do when we have our cars washed. At this coral bommie, seven Mantas were around:
Some really wanted to be movie stars:
And this one almost touched my camera. It is wide-angle, after all…