Two days of Manta madness at Karang Makassar, Komodo, Indonesia

During my 13 day trip on the Seven Seas liveaboard in Komodo, Indonesia we spent two days diving with large groups of Reef Mantas feeding at Karang Makassar.  One of the world's leading manta experts, Andrea Marshall, who has been intensely studying and diving with Manta's for ten years, said this concentration was in her top five encounters, ever.  She identified 63 different individuals based on belly photographs.  Incidentally, divers can contribute to the growing database of Mantas by contributing their manta belly photographs to mantamatcher.org .

Here are a few of my photos from this amazing experience and you can see more manta photos by going to:  https://plus.google.com/photos/110159573286645489662/albums/5975520118150235489?authkey=CILD8v7uxfHj1wE

This picture gives you some sense of the size of the mantas.  The juveniles were only 8 ft or so across while the large adults (note, the diver is much closer to my camera than the manta up above him) were about 15 ft across.

 Masha is getting some GoPro footage as this manta comes past.  Compare Masha to the width of the manta.

When you look in the eye of a manta you can tell they are looking back at you, like when you look in the eye of a humpback whales on the silver banks off the Dominican Republic and unlike the "Is anybody really home" feeling we got looking into the feeding whalesharks off Yucatan last summer.