Manta City and A Beatles’ Song

27th July 2017 - I’m on a boat off the coast of Ishigaki Island, part of the Yaeyama shoto archipelago, in the far, far south of tropical Japan, somewhere in the East China Sea.

We’re leaving bright manicured rice fields and dark tree-lined tumbling hills, from a small harbor crowded with little vessels. The sun is a diamond in the blue cellophane sky, the ocean is crystalline and the weather couldn’t be better. I’ve decided to scuba dive again after 10 years — we’re off looking for Manta Rays.

Near an island called Kayama, sinking to 50 feet in the blub-blub of bubbles and beams of fragmented sunlight, I reacquaint myself with life under the sea. Corals grow in stations of yellow and green. Angelfish, butterfly fish, parrotfish, damsels — the names dance — plasticine porters in my looking-glass eyes.

A foot-long crocodilefish, speckled tan on brown, camouflaged harmoniously in the sandy rubble, is a silly looking fellow once his shape is discovered. He shuffles from fin to fin and looks pointedly away, as if not to make eye contact.

A few seconds later, a yellow trumpetfish, like a lost golden flute, magically floats by.

There’s a song playing in my head, and an upside-down jellyfish gently sproings through mid-water on invisible springs. It looks like a tiny garden of florets on a flying saucer. In otherworldly crevices in the corals below, red polkaed crabs peak out. Nature can be so magically alien.

Follow

The next dive off Iriomote Island is called Nobaru Drop. The dive-master takes us down 60 feet and through an underwater gulley with rocky sides. A stingray zips by on the sandy bottom like a fast car on an open highway. I drift on slowly, following a shoal of shimmering glassfish to the end of the alley and through an archway.

Suddenly, I’m standing in the center of a submerged cavern. The water is thick with thousands of tiny fish, all pointing in the same direction, forming a column around me that spirals upwards, tick-tick-ticking like a million flashing points. The sun spotlights down from the aperture above, I spin around slowly, it’s like being in a kaleidoscope or a dream or a Beatles song. I’m getting dizzy.

A few minutes later, I reluctantly leave the starry infinity of the enchanted room. In the cool blue of the ocean, a foot-long cuttlefish appears, hovering slowly like a spaceship from a daydream. It has a trumpet mouth, a streamlined body and a skirt like a flamenco dancer. This dive is getting surreal.

A Million Flashing Points

Our final dive is at Manta City. Twenty minutes and we’re running slowly out of air and patience as we wait to see a manta ray. We hover and wait around a central coral bommie towering over our heads — a “station” where cleaner fish live. Black and white oceanic mantas usually drift in throughout the day, picking up their passengers. Cleaner wrasses hitch a ride, scurrying over them, exfoliating dead skin cells and eating parasites. A space age car-wash for flying newspaper taxis?

In the distance and 40 feet above, a shape emerges like some slow motion flying carpet. It glides by in the gloomy water, a blurry image on an old cassette player — half there, half imagined, and disappears as quickly as it came.

We wait again, running low on air, contemplating leaving, when out of left field again, this time heading directly towards us, comes an enormous manta ray — 10 feet wide with a huge gilled maw and undulating white triangular fins — like some amazing apparition. In the silence of the ocean with only the sound of my bubbling breath, I concentrate on this fleeting vision, willing it to stay longer. It glides by, makes a few lazy turns and flaps gently away. The dive ends soon after and we ascend slowly to the diamond studded sky. First manta sightings are a special occasion.

Manta