Dear Roman, my night with the manta ray stone ritual

I spent an evening tonight, on April 13, 2021, in Hawaii, Hawaii, near Kona, with the Manta Rays.

One of them, Amanda, was recently gangbanged by other rays a few days ago and is likely pregnant. To the instructor this is great news.

We go underwater and we go onto rocks in a circle of rocks. We sit down in the sand on our knees, holding onto a rock not to float back up if we haven’t been weighed down properly up on the boat (When you dive, you carry some rocks to control buoyancy). We hold flashlights and there is little buzzy plankton everywhere.

The idea is the manta rays come around and eat the plankton. It’s a huge family reunion. A huge celebration. Thanksgiving for the manta rays!

I think this was the most other-worldly thing I have ever seen in my life. It looks like a pagan ritual. It looks like an alien gathering. It’s completely not of this earth—and yet it is the most earthly, grounded thing too.

Everything is glowing. There is a ring of flashlights from all of us sitting in the circle, and in the middle lights are set up so we can properly see our guests.

They’re friendly. They swim up, and they can sense your electricity and avoid you. They can swim around you.

Most of the time they choose to. But sometimes they bump into you. They have a coating on them that protects them from infection, and you shouldn’t touch them or it may rub off.

They basically register as people, similar to how dolphins register as people. They know what they’re doing. They’re full adults. They have social dynamics, and they certainly seem to have thoughts. It’s their world, and we are the intrusion.

If these 14 rays didn’t show up, there would be no event. We’d just be dicking around underwater like losers, lose some money, go back up.

But they showed up. Sure, we lured them with some well-lit plankton, but they didn’t have to come. Sometimes they don’t.

There’s a deeper lesson here about sometimes you just have to show up.