Post by Greg MossmanPost by -hhThat was how I did it a few years ago...I'd probably recommend Ed
Robinson's (not Kona Honu divers..too cattle-y). I found out the next
day from Hans Eckert of Mango Sunset B&B (see below) that the Manta
Night Dive can also be done for 'free' as a shore dive if you know
where to go, which is how Hans does it.
I wouldn't recommend Ed, since he's based in Maui and doesn't come
over to the Big Island to do manta night dives AFAIK. We went with
Jack's, which is probably the biggest shop on the island, but they
have shots of Jerry Garcia diving with them so how bad could they be?
Jack's was the operation I was thinking of. My main advice here is
"NOT Kona Honu Divers", as I found them to have several shortcomings
that were very frustrating to an experienced diver .. and even though
I generally liked half of the Divemasters.
Post by Greg MossmanYes it was cattle-y, especially since we were hardly the only boat
there, but the idea is to herd all the divers into a circle on the
bottom, everyone shines their lights up (and they have even more
lights sitting in a crate in the middle of the circle), the plankton
starts to swarm, and the mantas come in to eat.
There's "cattle-y" on the boat, and then there's cattle-y at the dive
site. Looking back at what I wrote 4 years ago:
(a) A poor "hurry up and wait" treatment of their customers. Their
routine was that at (roughly) the designated meeting time, the crew
would finally take their first roll call -- and not until then --
they would finally accept gear to start to do set up (no customers
allowed yet on deck). It didn't matter that there were 15-20
customers gathered for the past 10 minutes. I noticed that over half
of the customers were using their rental equipment, wchih was already
on the boat and which could easily have been set up long beforehand,
but this wasn't done. Instead, they had their customers standing
around on their dock for a half hour *twiddling our thumbs* while they
set all the stuff up. In the end, their 'appointed meeting time'
wasn't anywhere close to when the boat left dock - IIRC, figure that
to be a good 45 minutes later. For the night manta dive, this
manifested itself with a 2-tank (twilight+snack+night) dive that
despite having the earliest meeting time (3pm) for the night dive,
they were also invariably the last boat back to port.
It is one thing to be slow because of being on 'Island Time', but this
wasn't it. Retrospectively, I suspect that the staff won't lift a
finger until the appointed hour because of how they're treated/paid by
management for their time.
(b) Internal Communication: the staff didn't have any of the
weightbelt info that I had already given at the diveshop. I believe
that they didn't have customer sizes on their rental gear either.
Had the shop not collected this data, the above "criminally slow" part
above would have been somewhat understandable - - but by the same
token, customers with our own gear should have been told at the Dive
Shop that we could show up later than the customers with rentals.
(c) Cattle Clutter: yes, the Newton 46 is a pretty roomy boat - -
until you put two dozen customers on them PLUS have several tupperware
containers full of rental gear strewn around too. For during the
dives, they do try to prevent it from being too bad of a herd by using
multiple DM guides leading around groups of 6 or 7, but with an AM
boat having three groups (& DM for each), plus an instructor with
students makes for very slow loads on & off even if you don't mind
having lead group dives. For the night Manta dive, I'd figure there
were probably twenty divers + IIRC a dozen snorkelers + staff + rental
gear tubs + coolers ... simply too much.
(d) Short Fills: they were using 3500psi HP80's, with the **highest**
pressure I saw across multiple dives & days being a whopping 3200psi @
ambient temperature, which meant of course immediately dropped to
3000psi within 2 minutes in the 77F water. As such, I'd call that
tank to be a full 500psi short, which basic physics say that with the
tank being ~15% short of full means that that HP80 was really only a
68 cubic foot tank.
I also noticed one DM who made it a point to grandstandly tell a
repeat customer (a heavy breather) so that we could all hear that he
was "doing him a favor" by giving him an HP100 at no charge. Of
course, the HP100 was short-filled too, so while ~85 cubic feet was
better than the 65-68ft^3 the rest of us were getting, it isn't all
that much more than what one would get with a Super 80 that had
actually been filled properly.
(e) Dive Limits by Other Means: the crowded divevboat resulted in DM
lead "groups", whose paths were designed to stay clear of each other,
so no real provision for a diver to go do his own independent dive
profile. And the short fills (especially with HP tanks) was a subtle
way to try to prevent most customers from bottom times of an hour.
FWIW, I believe a few of us surprised the DMs by not having horrible
air consumption. wIth the Manta dive, their dive plan was limited to
just 45 minutes, so I came back from that dive with 1400psi, despite a
3100psi (surface) start.
(f) Shake the Tip Can: the morning dive trips had an explicit "please
tip the DMs right here" speech before you were allowed off the boat.
I didn't t even think of timing how long it was, but it sure as hell
wasn't brief ...
At least their "hold the customers from getting off the boat while we
mention our tip jar" speech was mercifully short after the night
dive.
It wasn't all bad, though. There were two DMs that I believe were
quite capable and good. Of course, they were the quiet ones who
blended into the background that were easy to otherwise overlook
completely.
Post by Greg MossmanAs a shore dive, you'd be lacking all the lights that bring in the
plankton, unless the idea is to dive from shore and swim out to where
the boats are moored.
You're correct on the second part: you just do your shore dive when
the diveboat operators are going to be there, then just swim out to
join the milk crate of lights that was put down by the diveboats.
Pretty much all that should be required is a compass heading to spot
on the lights from your shore entry/exit spot, although I'd also hug
the bottom and avoid doing a surface swim (boat traffic).
-hh