Marilyn sez, "Pretty cool photos from July National Geographic. These manta rays in the Maldives have a 12-ft-wingspan, and the photographer Thomas Peschak was right in among them during feeding frenzies to get these shots. I especially like the last one in this gallery, which shows them lining up one behind the other in chain feeding behavior before swirling into a spiral formation for cyclone feeding, a behavior rarely seen outside the Maldives."

Feeding Frenzy (Thanks, Marilyn!)

  • farrellmcgovern

    Looks like a scene from the latest Doctor Who episode, “Planet of the Dead”!

  • oldmanfury

    You can night-dive or snorkel manta feeding frenzies off Hawaii’s big island – the mantas have been showing up in a couple of locations for years. Flashlights are handed out to the divers attract plankton to the light, and giant mantas swoop inches from you to scoop up the plankton. Often, they execute perfect loops in front of you, over and over. Probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. My brother was whacked pretty good by a manta that had to change course to avoid a tourist.

  • Takuan

    must be a transcendent moment. Night though? Don’t others feed?

  • sonipitts

    @OLDMANFURY

    I got to thinking about how we would respond to the same behavior, and now I have this image stuck in my head of a bunch of mantas in water bubbles coming up on land at night holding bacon-attracting bioluminescent fish, surrounded by hungry tourists milling around in a crowd to snatch up the incoming porkitude.

    Which, I have to admit, is a killer image.

  • Anonymous

    crikey!

  • Anonymous

    Those are the little bay mantas, too. According to the same NG article, the deep sea mantas get up to 22′ wide (6.7m).

    They’re beautiful, alien creatures.

  • oldmanfury

    Video of the night-dive here:

    http://www.konahonudivers.com/mantaray.shtml

    The 20 other divers were more of a hazard than the dozen mantas.