Snorkeling with Manta Rhei in Komodo National Park

After our amazing three day liveaboard adventure with Flores Journey, we had two more days of snorkeling with Manta Rhei!  We took day trips from Labuan Bajo out into Komodo National Park on a dive boat, returning each night to our hotel Bayview Gardens.  The boat carried mostly scuba divers and therefore went out to deeper sites more suitable for diving.  The kids liked snorkeling above the divers, with their air bubbles floating up and surrounding them.  (Interactive map)

On the first day we went to Siaba Besar, Batu Bolong, and Tatawa Besar.  We had many good sea life sightings.  If anyone can help me identify what is in the uncaptioned photos, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Blue Sea Star

Feather Star

Staghorn Coral

Pavona coral

Clownfish in the Anemone

Jellyfish inside the black ring

Really large boxy fish

Since we had to snorkel until the divers ran out of air, we were in the water a lot longer than we had been on the days prior.  Charlie found that instead of snorkeling on his own, he preferred to climb onto my back and use me as a raft.  I wore the lifejacket to keep us both afloat.

I took all the best video footage from the first day and compiled a medley video for you.  It includes: sea turtles, a sting ray, a black tipped reef shark, a manta ray and a plethora of coral and fish.

Day two with Manta Rhei, Willow and I went alone, leaving Eric with the other 2 kids back at the hotel.  Willow and I did only 2 snorkels that day, and then napped through the 3rd one.  The first two were incredible though, especially the first one.  We were dropped in a manta ray feeding ground called the Cauldron.  Willow swears she saw 23 manta ray, but I can really only swear that I saw at least 7 different ones.  Not sure if Willow kept recounting the same ones over and over, but it was exciting nevertheless.

This video shows some of the boat and watching the divers jump in.  On this day, the dive shop loaded Maya's fins onboard, not Willow's fins, which were way too big for Willow.  To secure them, they tied a piece of rope around her foot. The video shows us coming up for a break after getting swept along quickly with the current through the channel.  It gets very exciting after that!

After the first manta ray spotting, they just kept coming and coming.  Every time we turned around there were more.  I compiled all the best footage of them into this next video.  At one point you can see 6 at once.

We also spotted this unicorn fish!  It really looks like it has a unicorn horn!

Our second snorkel spot was Crystal Bay.  The dive boat dropped the divers off some distance away then dropped us off and left us to go back to the divers.  We had an hour to snorkel and wait for our boat to return.  In just the first 30 minutes we saw four sea turtles.  They were all close to the bottom though, so they were hard to get a very good look at.  I drew arrows to help you spot them.

Then Willow got tired and decided to float out the rest of the time on the life preserver.

In short time, a small boat from a different dive company came to pick up 2 divers that were in the bay with us.  We asked if we could hitch a ride back to our boat via their little boat.  They agreed, but we had a bit of a problem when we tried to board.  Since Willow had been relaxing on the life preserver, her mask and snorkel were resting in her lap.  When she climbed onto the boat, her mask and snorkel slipped off her lap and started sinking to the bottom.  Our guide had already ditched his fins into the boat and was holding onto one of Willow's fins when I pointed out the sinking mask.  He tried to go after it, but couldn't get down fast enough without his fins on.  He decided to stay in the water to mark the spot where it went down, and told us to go back with the divers to get our boat.  For some reason he kept Willow's fin in one hand and the life preserver in the other.
Willow and I sped off to our boat to get them to come back to Johannes, our guide, to rescue him and the mask and snorkel.  We came back about 20 minutes later to find Johannes using the life preserver to float directly over the mask and snorkel, still marking the spot.  Our divemaster asked him why he couldn't free dive down to get it, but Willow's fin was too small for his foot and it was just too deep.  They eventually put a diver in the water to go down and fetch it.

I think Johannes was grateful we decided to skip our 3rd snorkel of the day, since that meant he got to nap too.  He deserved it.
We got back to the hotel in time to catch an amazing sunset, our last in Labuan Bajo.