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Kona Manta Night Dive

Big Island, Hawaii, United States · 814m · 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.

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.