What starts as an unnerving encounter with a rather large creature in the dark… underwater, quickly becomes a graceful ballet with a very gentle animal who is merely trying to feed or breed, we’re never quite sure which.
It begins when you’re coming back from the deep, back up over the Canyon rim into the shallows, in around 50-30 ft. of water. In the beam of your light, you suddenly notice large clouds of sand up ahead. That is your first clue that they are about.
Then, as you approached the cloud, you may or may not see a tell-tale 2 foot long stinger protruding from the cloud, a stinger almost never used in anger, but more for balance while swimming.
Then, what usually happens is, the Bat Ray becomes aware of your presence and slowly and majestically rises up out of the cloud to see who is approaching and this is where it gets a little unnerving, because the first thing you see is the rather large, canine-like head rise up and a remarkably large, baleful eye locks onto you, from about 3 ft. away. “Who goes there?” it seems to say.
He looks at you for a bit and then usually decides that you’re disturbing him and he zooms off. But, woe be to the diver who thinks her encounter with the 3-4 ft. Bat Ray has ended, because it usually zooms off, only to decide that, “Hey, that’s MY feeding ground—I’m not giving it up so easily!” and, it zooms back, straight at you, and then, just when you think collision is imminent, it banks either right or left, or straight up and you see it hurtle by, its white belly almost touching your mask, as you frantically fall back to avoid it slamming into you. Sometimes, as it zooms by, you can see the remnants of its dinner, a crab or the tentacle from a hapless octopus, protruding from its mouth.
But, the Bat Ray ballet is not over yet, because they seem to be attracted by your underwater light, so, even when it can’t scare you away from its feeding ground, it continues to circle you out of curiosity, it’s large dog-like head and eye seeming to look you up and down, as it brushes by you and you reach out and gently touch its powerfully muscled wings and you feel in awe that this large, magnificent, but gentle creature of the deep has allowed you to get so close to it…reach out and touch…..and have a Close Encounter in the Dark.
[For more info on Bat Rays, see: Monterey Bay Aquarium:
http://tinyurl.com/7l9jc]
