Flyby

Eight mantas came through, and the current was trying to take everyone else with them.

Manta Ridge is a cleaning station in a channel that runs hard. The mantas hold in the flow with the ease of things built for it, letting small fish pick over their skin, while the divers below hook into the rock with a length of line and a steel hook and hang there like kites. When the down-draught comes, you feel the hook take your weight.

This one passed straight overhead, a metre or two up, yellow butterflyfish trailing it like sparks, the sun behind. A fisheye behind a glass dome takes in the whole animal at that range. There is no time to compose; there is time to be where it is going. Eight came through in the one dive. This is the one that came closest.