Swimming with Manta Rays

Hanifaru Bay, a short hop from Malé in the Maldives, stages the largest reef manta feeding aggregation known on Earth. Each summer the southwest monsoon drives plankton into the shallow bay, and mantas pour in by the dozen, spiraling upward in feeding chains called cyclones just beneath snorkelers, with no lights, no bait and no feeding stations. August through October is the heart of it, when plankton, tides and mantas align. Reliable manta encounters also run off Kona on Hawaii's Big Island, at Manta Point off Nusa Penida in Indonesia, along Manta Ridge in Yap, Micronesia, and around the Socorro Islands of Mexico.