Last Light

Below the surface of a Maldivian channel, in water turned green by the plankton that feeds them, the mantas are waiting.

They have come to a cleaning station, a coral head where small wrasse pick parasites and dead skin from their bodies. It is not a visit; it is an appointment. They queue, hover, drift off and return, sometimes a dozen at a time, each taking its turn as though there were somewhere else to be.

A manta will not be hurried. Approach it and it leaves. Wait, and it comes to you.

This one passed directly overhead, lit by nothing but what was left of the daylight. No strobe. In water this thick a flash would have lit the plankton and not the animal. A fiftieth of a second, the camera held still while three metres of manta moved through it. What the light found is the picture; what it didn't is the sea.