Kona Jet Ski Blog

Out at Jet Ski Island, back in the beginning of March, we started shining high powered flood lights over the side of the platform at night to see what kind of marine life we could attract. It wasn’t long, maybe 2-3 weeks, and we were greeted by schools of mackerels, squirrelfish and needlefish. They came to feed on the plankton which were attracted to the lights. After 6 weeks of shining our flood lights, we had our first Manta Ray visit, Jana Ray. She hungrily fed in our lights for hours. Two days after her first visit, she returned again and stayed for hours feeding. She is a juvenile (small) ray approximately 5-6 ft. across. She prefers to feed up at the surface , doing countless backward somersaults scooping up the plankton. On many nights we would also have bottlenose dolphins come to our platform curiously inspecting what was making the vibration up above. It was our generator that powers the lights on the deck which caused the vibrations. After 10 weeks, we were greeted by our second ray, KJ Ray. KJ is much larger than Jana Ray, maybe 10 ft. from wingtip to wingtip. KJ needs more room to feed because of his size and likes to feed below Jana catching all of the plankton Jana misses. We are now 3 months into shining our flood lights and have a third ray feeding on our plankton buffet. We are still trying to identify which ray it is by capturing a still photo of its stomach which has very unique black spots and patches. Those unique black spots and patches is how we are able to tell them apart from each other. As we continue to shine our flood lights, I expect more Manta Rays will stumble into the easy “meal” we are serving alongside our platform and those that do come, will return more often to visit and feed more frequently anytime they’re in the neighborhood. Stay tuned or simply come join us and see for yourself!

Manta Ray

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