Kona Manta Ops and Shore Diving Rentals

[beth_castroll]

Hello-

We will be on the Big Island for a week in June. We want to do the 2-Tank Manta Night Dive because if you are going to get wet your should do it twice and the Manta Dives are on my bucket list. I figure since all these Dive Ops got together to standardize the Manta Dive to maximize Divers and Snorkels in the water they all must be pretty good otherwise they wouldn't survive. So my question is: What Dive OPs have the smallest and fastest boats? I don't generally like going out on the bigger boats. Bonus points for a fun Dive OP, but safety first.


Also, we are AOW with 200 dives,....all boat. We will be researching some easy access shore dives and feel comfortable with navigation in good visibility. Are there shore guides who freelance? We would want to do a one tank dive at say 2 Step or Airport Beach to get our fins wet with the shore diving and then would want to rent tanks and weights to go off on our own bliss.

My idea list 10 tanks over 10 days.

 

[fisheater]

All of the dive ops are good and none has a boat significantly different from the others. Take your pick.

There are freelance shore diving guides. I have never used any there, so I do have any recommendations.

But, you REALLY should do a blackwater dive while you're there.

 

[grantwiscour]

The big three are Jack's Dive Locker, Big Island Divers and Kona Honu Divers...in no particular order.
All three are Very Good Dive Companies and will give Top Notch Service and be Very Safe.

Some of the smaller companies will also take out divers to see the mantas...I haven't gone with them. They are probably good outfits also but I can't give an reference.

 

[living4experiences]

I use Jack's Diving Locker for my diving on Kona, including the manta night dive and blackwater diving. They do a great job in educating you about the mantas in the predive briefing. Some other ops are not as manta conscious and fail to instruct the divers about never touching the mantas because when you touch them, it scrapes off the protective film on their belly. They come in so close that you could reach up and touch, but just enjoy the show. The encounter is fantastic! Last time I was there in 2018, Jack's had a manta sighting guarantee. If you don't see any mantas, you get to come back for another chance for free as long as there's space on the boat. It's only happened once to me and the second time we saw a lot of mantas. So it's a good idea to schedule your manta dive early in your vacation in case you need to come back for another try.

 

[SandyUT]

For boat diving we used Pacific Rim Divers - GREAT! Did daily dives with them 2x and one manta dive (second trip) with them.

For the first night manta we used big island divers...its like being a Disneyland and the dive masters treated us like children, they even acted like Shreck - spoke like him, made all the same mannerisms etc. Not in a fun way, but in a "I cant believe we paid to be on this joke of a boat". I will say they were attentive underwater, but the boat experience was F'ed. I wrote a feedback email to the shop and they defended their crew and basically blew us off which only made matters worse.

 

[NorCalDM]

Pacific Rim, Kona Honu and Big Island divers are my go to shops in the Kona area. For shore diving check out Blue Wilderness in the Queens shopping center they can give you a map of good shore dives and do tank rental cards that don't expire. Also depending on where you are staying Kohala Divers is a great shop and get to sites that the Kona boat don't get to.