Hawaii 5: Snorkeling with manta rays

On the big island, we kept hearing a loud chirp. I first heard it at the overlook we saw at dusk. When we got to the VRBO that we stayed at, we heard it right outside our windows, and it continued all night. Then in the morning it stopped completely until night fell again.

My son-in-law Kyle is a birder, so I texted him a video clip, saying "Kyle, what makes this sound?" The chirp was consistent enough that I was able to time it perfectly and have it make the sound right after I asked the question. He said his bird song app didn't cover Hawaii, so he couldn't tell me.

The last night at our place, as the chirp started up again, I figured out what pitches it was chirping, and I whistled along with it to do a duet of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean." Linette laughed when she heard me do it. Then every time she heard the chirp, she could no longer not hear "My Bonnie...".

Here's a 17 second video with my question to Kyle and the duet:

We thought the sound was made by a bird, but in a bizarre coincidence, I happened to find out what it really was. Just after returning home from this trip we were discussing a possible family trip with all our kids, which ended up including a stop in Puerto Rico. As I watched a video about Puerto Rico, I heard this same sound! The narrator said it is made by their beloved coquí, a tree frog native to Puerto Rico. It was accidentally introduced to the big island of Hawaii in 1986, and has since become a bit of a problem there (up to 2000 frogs per acre), as it doesn't have native predators. So that solved the mystery, and it was funny that I happened to stumble across the answer in that way.

Monday, January 27, 2025, was our last day in Hawaii. We awoke to some nice sunrise colors that we could see from the deck.

I really liked having breakfast on the deck while we looked at the amazing view.

I also throughly enjoyed our magical treehouse in the jungle on the mountain.

A lady at church recommended that we go see Laupāhoehoe Point, which was on our way, so we pulled over and spent a few minutes there.

I'm not sure why it says "Randy Point" there, but I'll take it.

They had huge cement thingies that looked like jacks.

There were black and silver crabs crawling all over it.

It was fun to watch the waves crash into the rocks.

Here are several shots in a row of the same wave.

And here is a video clip of a similar thing:

Finally, we drove the rest of the way around to the western ("Southern Idaho") side of the island.

Lori had brought snorkel gear, but hadn't gotten to snorkel yet, so we went to Kahalu’u Beach Park, and it turned out that this was even better snorkeling that Hanauma Bay! There was a great variety of fish, and there was even a friendly volunteer lady by the shore helping you know how to snorkel, telling you how to get out to the fish safely, and offering to spray your mask with anti-fog.

We snorkeled for a good hour there, and saw lots of fish. Linette and I asked the lady where to see turtles, and she recommended the mossy area along the left side. So we went out there, and at first didn't see any, but after Linette turned back, I finally saw a turtle eating moss in a shallow area. It was too shallow for me to get over there, but I was able to get a decent look.

Before we even got in, I saw a guy being helped by a lifeguard after getting stung by one of these black sea urchins. They are venomous and the long, sharp spines can stab like a hypodermic needle and break off after sticking you(!). So I was sure to keep my distance. (These also help the health of the reef by eating algae that would otherwise smother the coral).

I was able to identify 38 kinds of fish (with help from Google Lens), in addition to the turtle, some coral, anemone, urchines, and a few more fish I couldn't identify. Here are a few of my favorites, taken from my GoPro video footage. Maybe identifying them in advance will make it more fun to watch the video that follows, as you see each of these in action.

This is a Bluespine Unicornfish, called that because of the "horn" over the forehead, and the blue spines by the tail, which are sharp and venomous.

This is a similar fish, the Orange-spine Unicornfish, even though it doesn't have a "horn" on its forehead.

Here you can more clearly see its orange spines, sometimes called its "scalpels". These are also venomous and can be lethal to other fish. Humans who try to touch one of these fish wouldn't die, but would get a nasty surprise. (I'm kind of glad I didn't know any of this while I was snorkeling, because I saw quite a few of these).

Here is an Orange-band Surgeonfish.

One of the most curious kinds of fish were these Bluespotted Cornetfish, which are actually related to seahorses. These were about 4 feet long!

I thought the markings around the eyes of the Dragon Wrasse made them look Asian.

This Knobsnout Parrotfish had similar eye markings.

This is a Fourspot Butterflyfish. (Apparently they count the spots on both sides).

This is a Lagoon Triggerfish, which has interesting stripes.

And this is a related fish, the Reef Triggerfish, with even more crisp lines.

The stripy fish here is a Moorish Idol.

And here is an Ornate Butterflyfish.

Here is another Parrotfish, which had pretty rainbow colors.

These funny boxy fish are called Spotted Boxfish. It seemed like it was a male chasing the female. So typical!

Here is a Threadfin Butterflyfish, which had interesting diagonal lines.

And I swam through a couple whole schools of Yellow Tangs.

This little fella is a young Yellowtail Wrasse.

When it grows up, it will look like this! (I was surprised to learn that these were both the same kind of fish).

And with that introduction, here is a 10 minute video of snorkeling at Kahalu'u Beach. This video has music to make it a little more entertaining. In addition to the fish above, you can keep an eye out for Lori and Linette! (Feel free to click full screen for full effect.)

Finally it was time to go find some lunch. Lori got natural curls from the Hawaiian water and humid air.

After eating at a Hawaiian fast food place, our last adventure--because we're crazy--was to go snorkel with manta rays in the dark!

First we boarded a boat and took a 35 minute bumpy ride out to the spot.

Then we had to wait a few minutes for the sun to go down.

While we waited, we could watch the waves crash against the shore. (It also tossed our boat a bit).

Soon the sun was getting lower and the colors began to show.

Eventually, they put out these surf board things that had handles to hold on to. They had a light underneath that would attract plankton, and the plankton would attract manta rays. We all hoped.

They put pool noodles under our feet, so that we could remain flat along the surface, so as not to scare away the rays. We battled with the waves for a few minutes, and I thought about how this wouldn't be worth it at all if we didn't see any rays.

But then a manta ray came gliding by along the ocean floor, about 15 feet down. Later, more and more of them came. They were huge! The larger ones can be 12-15 feet wide.

Here are a pair of them approaching us at once.

And another pair gliding under us.

Two of the rays did loops right in front of our faces! Here is the belly of one as it loops right in front of me.

Manta rays are "gentle giants". They don't have teeth, nor do they have stingers like stingrays. They just slurp up plankton as they glide along.

We were in the water for about an hour, and I compiled a 12 minute video showing most of the times that the manta rays glided by, along with glimpses of the sunset as it progressed. (The GoPro got tricked by the blue light in the darkness, so sometimes things look more blue or red than they did in real life.)

Sandra and Lori were opposite from me and Linette (and a little to our left). At times 5:45 and 9:20 in the video, you can see a ray do a loop right in front of us. One also does one further away, and that looked cool, too.

Here is the video of our manta ray experience with Ocean Encounters:

There were a few other boats out there as well.

Eventually, they said it was time to go, and we were all ready by then anyway. As they rinsed us off with fresh water, I said, "Don't hold back on the rinse--we are heading straight from here to the airport for an overnight flight!"

We took turns changing into dry clothes in the tiny restroom on board, as the boat flung us around. But eventually we were all able to get prepared for our trip home.

Finally, we boarded our redeye flight. It seems that all flights back from Hawaii are on that schedule.

There were only two of us on our row, so Linette was able to lay out and get a bit of sleep. The Dramamine she had taken to avoid seasickness on the little boat may have helped her as well.

We had a four hour layover in Los Angeles, where I caught a few minutes of sleep with my head down on a table.

When we flew over our snow-capped mountains, I had the thought that while this wasn't Hawaii, it was really pretty, too.

J.T. was at the airport to pick us up again. I would give him 5 stars.

We were a bit worried about fitting luggage in our vehicles during this trip, but it turned out just fine everywhere we went.

What a great trip! I was so glad that Sandra & Dave and Lori & Jim could join us!

I looked at the tentative plan I had e-mailed to everyone, and as I looked back, we were able to do almost everything, and a few things we hadn't planned on, including: Waikiki Beach (and surfing lessons for me), Pearl Harbor, Nu'uanu Pali Lookout, sealings at the Laie Temple, eat at the famous food trucks and again at Haieiwa Joe's, watch people not quite die in the big waves at Waimea Beach, see the sun rises from the beach by our place, hike near our AirBnB, and snorkel at Hanauma Bay.

Then on the big island, we were able to see hot lava and walk through a lava tube at Volcano National Park, see a beautiful Japanese tea garden, meet some wonderful people at church, see some beautiful waterfalls, eat some tasty ribeye steaks, get in some awesome snorkeling, and finish off with a bang by riding a boat to do night snorkeling with manta rays. And this was all in 7 days (plus two half-days for traveling).

Jim joked about how "Randy & Linette wouldn't let us not have fun". We do tend to pack a lot into a trip, and I think everyone enjoyed it. We did have some down time, too, and we didn't usually have to get up any earlier than our circadian rhythm insisted.

Thanks for taking some time to follow along on this journey with us!