Diving with manta rays in Ishigaki

Diving is cool, but diving with manta rays is probably ten times cooler. We made a short diving trip to Ishigaki, a small island in Okinawa prefecture. This place is famous for its diving spots, and above all for its manta rays “cleaning stations”.

In order to get cleaned, the rays come at a few precise locations, consisting in small underwater hills, covered with corals and butterfly fishes. The mantas come here, and start circling around the top of the reefs. They open their mouthes and just wait for the butterfly fish to come and eat the parasites. When the rays are clean enough they simply leave, and the “cleaners” wait for their next customer.

This is such an amazing thing to watch ! Fortunately these stations are relatively shallow, around 12 meters deep, meaning that it is an easy dive during which your air consumption should be low enough to stay easily close to one hour underwater with a standard cylinder. That is just great… If you come to Japan and if you have a diving certification, don’t miss it. You’ll need a guide and a boat to get there. I highly recommend Koji, our guide for these dives.

And by the way, these reefs have much more to show than the mantas…