Kona Manta Night Dive
Big Island, Hawaii, United States · 8–14m · beginner · sheltered
Kneel around dive lights after dark while reef mantas barrel-roll overhead feeding on plankton.
Conditions today
Retrieved · refreshed hourly
excellent
Excellent — calm morning with 0.4m effective waves.
Limiting factor: none
- Wave height
- 0.7–0.8m
- Wave period
- 10.3–11.5s
- Wind chop
- 0m
- Sea temp
- 27.6–28.3°C
Ranges span today's hours. Wave height here is the raw sea state — the rating scales it for how exposed the site is. Sheltered — reef or lagoon protection, so swell is scored at half its open-water height.
Next few days
- TodayExcellent — calm morning with 0.4m effective waves.excellent
- ThursdayExcellent — calm morning with 0.3m effective waves.excellent
- FridayExcellent — calm morning with 0.4m effective waves.excellent
Each day is scored over its morning dive window, the same as today's rating.
Dive briefing
AI-generated
This is a sheltered beginner site in shallow water, 8 to 14 metres, where you'll kneel by your dive lights after dark while reef mantas feed on plankton overhead. Conditions are excellent with no limiting factors — the rating is based on a calm morning with 0.4m effective wave height. Sea temperature ranges from 27.6 to 28.3°C.
Divers commonly log green sea turtles here, along with yellow tangs, moorish idols, surgeonfish, and spotted boxfish. The thin-shelled rock crab is often recorded as well. This is a night dive, so your lights will be essential to your safety and the experience.
Written by Claude (claude-haiku-4-5-20251001) from the rating, forecast, and sightings on this page — it has no other source and cannot look anything up. Treat it as a summary, not as local knowledge.
Commonly seen here
Most-recorded species near this site, ranked by research-grade iNaturalist sightings from divers, snorkelers, and naturalists.
Chelonia mydas2229 sightings
Zebrasoma flavescens1291 sightings
Grapsus tenuicrustatus1002 sightings
Acanthurus sandvicensis838 sightings
Zanclus cornutus808 sightings
Ostracion meleagris664 sightings
Acanthurus nigrofuscus611 sightings
Naso lituratus610 sightings
Species come from iNaturalist — research-grade sightings logged by divers, snorkelers, and naturalists nearby. The ranking reflects what people photograph most, not guaranteed abundance. Ask a local operator what's actually being seen. Species names link to iNaturalist for range maps, seasonality and more photos. Photos by iNaturalist contributors under Creative Commons licences — individual credit on hover.