In Salomon again our Manta-luck didn't desert us. In fact we chose to shift our anchorage to Ile Takamaka in order to search the outer reef with our dinghi for our favourite rays. This proved to be difficult due to the onset of the southeast trades with increasing surf. So you can imagine our joy when we were just relaxing with a sundowner aboard "Rutea" with our friends Ruth and Neal when suddenly a conspicuous Fin broke the surface right next to us! Ruth was the first to spot it and it turned out that we didn't need to look for Mantas after all - they had found us ;-)
Incidentally we had anchored directly at a place where for two weeks two to five rays showed up to surface feed. We managed to take ID shots of 11 individuals, here are the images.
*** breaking news *** we just learned they are all new to the Manta Trust database - so we managed to increase the total number of known individuals of that area from 44 to 55 - yippiehhhh!!!
>>planned route - join us ...