When I booked my flight to the Big Island of Hawaii, I know that I wanted to swim with giant manta rays.
Ethically interacting with wildlife is always something that you can never fully prepare for, as wild animals are highly unpredictable. Sometimes you lose out, and sometimes you just get lucky.
Every blog and “best-of” list of top things to do on the Big Island listed “swim with giant manta rays” as one of the must-do, don’t-miss activities. And as soon as I saw that, I thought “say less, where do I sign up?” Is it safe? Where do I go? Is this something I can do on my own?
At first I did a quick Google search to find some answers. I was pretty surprised to see how many places offer the tours, and that they were even on big booking sites like Viator! But if I was going to go swimming in the middle of the ocean at night with apex predators around, I wanted to make sure it was done right!
After doing my research, I settled on a smaller company called Kona Snorkel Trips and couldn’t have been happier. I’ll explain more in a bit.
So now that I’ve ticked off my major bucket list of being able to swim with giant manta rays in Hawaii, I can tell you what it’s like, how to plan it, and some tips!
But first – IS IT ETHICAL TO SWIM WITH GIANT MANTA RAYS?
Honestly, this was one of the first hurdles I had to break down before I booked anything. After some research, I came across a website called Manta Ray Advocates and learned the history of this activity. Let’s learn more about this activity.
Back in the 1970s, there was a resort off the coast of Kona, called the Kona Surf Hotel. The resort used bright floodlights to illuminate the surf zone for their patrons. At the time, they didn’t realize that the bright lights would not only attract more surfers and visitors, but plankton as well.
Plankton are tiny organisms that live in the ocean and are the main food source for giant manta rays. They are attracted to light, so, naturally, they were drawn to the bright floodlights of the Kona Surf Hotel.
“Over time, the manta rays began associating light with their natural food source; this process is called “classical conditioning” or “Pavlov effect”. This is how the shoreline of the Kona Surf Hotel became a favorable feeding location.”1
Then, in the early 90s, a local realized the potential tourist attraction revenue and it evolved from there. Since then, guidelines for ethically interacting with these gentle giants were put into place for visitors and operators alike to abide by.
And from what I learned, companies abide by these guidelines and encourage their patrons do follow suit.
Swim with giant manta rays in a nut shell
After the giant manta ray network caught wind of the righteous floodlights attracting plankton, they decided it was a great feeding place and it kind of became a thing for these gentle giants to hang out in the area. I mean, can you get any better than Hawaii?
When you swim with giant manta rays, you can either snorkel on the surface of the water, or scuba on the ocean floor. By having humans on the ocean floor and flat atop the surface, it creates a great safe space for the mantas to actually feed and just be.
So for the actual adventure! It’s a 2-3 hour excursion with a boat ride to the feeding grounds, 30-40 minutes actually in the water, with a return boat ride. While that doesn’t seem like a long time in the water, it actually is enough time to fully appreciate the experience while not being absolutely frozen after!
The cost for the manta ray night snorkel with Kona Snorkel Trips is $139 non-refundable, or $149 refundable before 48 hours prior to the trip, which is totally worth this bucket list-worthy adventure!
The adventure is pretty straightforward – you board a boat, go on a fun little ride to the location, the guides put a floatation device in the water, and you slide in with your snorkeling gear and hold on for the show below the surface!
View of the surface before we slid in to swim with the giant manta rays. The colors on the water are the LED lights from the floatation devices. Many tour operators have different time slots available. I learned that the time right after the sun sets is the best time to catch a good show!
Is it dangerous to swim with giant manta rays?
Every adventure carries inherent risk, especially those that take place in the ocean. However, these snorkeling excursions are designed to be safe. You receive a safety briefing before you board the vessel, there are life jackets, EPIRB, and other safety precautions taken on board.
Is it scary?
A little. You’re snorkeling in the ocean at night. But it’s the kind of fear that gets your heart pumping a little harder, but also contributes to the thrill of seeing these gentle giants. And that’s just it. They’re gentle. I did see a shark swimming by, but he didn’t pay us any attention.
It can be a little daunting to slide into the ocean at sunset/night, but as soon as you put your head under and realize how cool of an experience it is, you forget all about everything but the rays.
If the manta rays are extremely active, they’ll start barrel rolling to get as much plankton into their mouths as possible and can get extremely close to you. Don’t worry, they can sense where objects are, so they won’t run into you. But having a giant mouth coming towards your face can be a little scary…until you realize there aren’t any teeth and humans aren’t their type of meal!
As long as you are floating horizontally on the surface, the giant manta rays will get really close to you. This is the underside of one of the females that kept barrel rolling in front of my face…literally inches away!
Do you need snorkeling experience to swim with giant manta rays?
Yes, you need some type of snorkeling experience to swim with giant manta rays in Hawaii. That being said, you don’t have to be an expert with hours of experience. But you need to be comfortable wearing a mask, snorkel, and breathing underwater.
You also need to be able to swim. You are hopping into the ocean. Wearing a life jacket can help you feel more comfortable, but it doesn’t take the place of swimming or snorkeling experience. This is not only for your safety, but the safety of the crew, other patrons, and just common sense.
I grew up swimming in pools and the Pacific Ocean in Southern California. I’ve spent many hours snorkeling in pools, coves, lakes, the Caribbean Sea, and Pacific Ocean. You want experience before this excursion so you can actually enjoy it.
I remember snorkeling off the coast of Oahu in the open ocean at a known turtle cleaning station back in 2021. The company I went with (I can’t remember their name) required us to wear life jackets when snorkeling, which I was a little upset with, but whatever. It was me, 2 guides, and 2 families from Alaska. Apparently nobody in the 2 families had ever snorkeled before, and they had barely any experience swimming.
Blurry shot with my GoPro Max before I knew it needed a housing unit to get clear underwater pictures. This is from the snorkeling adventure in Oahu, and all the dark dots behind me are turtles!
Like, we’re talking 1-2 times in a pool. They’d never worn a mask or breathed through a snorkel before.
They hopped into the ocean, tried to swim around for about 5 minutes, then all hopped back into the boat. That left me swimming around the turtle cleaning station with essentially a private tour guide for almost an hour.
It wasn’t a cheap tour! And I can appreciate the desire to do something more “adventurous” and YOLO it, but I can’t help but think about how much money they spent for a snorkeling adventure to only spend 5 minutes actually in the water.
Don’t let that be you if you decide to swim with giant mantas!
Is there any guarantee that you’ll see the giant manta rays?
There’s no 100% guarantee for anything when wild animals are involved. But there’s a good chance your charter company will be on the radio with other companies to try and find the best viewing opportunities!
When I went, we had 4 rays dancing and barrel rolling around us!
How much is it to swim with giant manta rays in Hawaii?
Each company is going to set their own rates, but I paid $139 for my adventure with Kona Snorkel Trips. I also believe in tipping when the service is excellent and when I feel taken care of, so I also tipped $50 at the end of the trip. Of course, the tip is totally up to you. But this was an amazing experience and I felt safe, taken care of, educated, and entertained.
What do you do during the excursion?
Here’s the basic timeline of how my swim with the giant manta rays went:
- 15ish minutes of gear fitting and waiver-signing, depending on how early you show up – you get masks, snorkels, and wetsuits
- 10 minute briefing about what we were about to do, including what not to do
- 5 minute boarding the vessel
- 10 minute interlude while we watched a pod of dolphins playing around us
- 2 minute break to watch the sun set
- 30ish minute ride to the snorkel site
- 5 minutes wait/donning our masks and snorkel as our guides lowered our floatation device into the water
- 30-40 minutes of floating on the surface, faces in the water, holding onto the floatation device, watching giant manta rays play and eat
- 10 minutes getting back into the boat and putting away the floatation
- 30ish minute ride back to the dock
I didn’t have a watch on me and I left my phone locked up at the shop, so my times are estimates. But you get the idea.
Another shot of the underbelly of a giant manta!
The vessel we took out was an old retired Navy Seal rigid hull inflatable boat. It wasn’t the sexiest of boats, but it surprisingly worked better than any other boat I’d been on for snorkeling. It’s fast, you’re close to the water when you get in and out, and you have 360* views as you ride in it.
The floatation device we used looked like an old surfboard with ropes laced around the edges for us to hold onto. LED lights were affixed to the board, pointing down to attract the plankton. We were instructed to hold on and lock our elbows so we became one with the board. It was more comfortable than I thought it would be!
This is the position you stay in while in the water – holding onto the straps of a floatation device. If you need to move spots, you hang on and the guides will drag the float to another location where rays are more active.
How do you take pictures of the giant manta rays?
This is one of those excursions where you WANT to have a camera for!
I have always owned a GoPro for as long as I can remember. Well, at least 10 years. And I was excited to bring along my new GoPro Hero 12 on its maiden voyage. I also had a “bobber” that I’ve had for years and affixed it to the camera. It’s yellow, small, and floats with a strap for your wrist.
If you don’t have your own GoPro, I highly recommend getting one for this excursion. You can usually find some used ones cheap online. Or, Kona Snorkel Trips is awesome and has some that you can rent for the adventure, and then you keep the SD card from the camera afterwards. And if you go on another adventure with them, you can use the GoPro again for free…just bring back the SD card.
Believe me – this is one of those times where you NEED to splurge for a camera!
I highly recommend booking a trip with Kona Snorkel Trips!
Like I mentioned at the start of this article, I choose to book my trip with Kona Snorkel Trips. I was so pleased with the whole experience, I booked a second, different snorkeling excursion with them!
Kona Snorkel Trips is female-owned and employs more women than most other companies. They also identify as LGBTQ+-owned. I love pumping my tourist dollars not only into local companies, but companies that are owned and operated by minorities or underrepresented people. And I had the best time!
The guides were knowledgeable about the rays, ocean, Kona, Hawaii, snorkeling, boats, and numerous other topics. They were engaging, funny, passionate about the ocean and its inhabitants, honor the Spirit of Aloha and Hawaiian culture and history, and it showed. When you embark on adventures like this, you hope to be guided by a group of people that are enthusiastic about what you’re doing. And that’s what I experienced with Kona Snorkel Trips!
I absolutely loved being able to swim with giant manta rays in Hawaii, and was pleased with my experience with Kona Snorkel Trips! They didn’t ask for this post, but I always like to share and recommend companies that I love!
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