Where the Ocean Begins

The briefing was short. 'Mantas are filter feeders. They have no interest in you. Do not touch. Stay on the edge of the bay. If they come to you — and they will come to you — just float.' Then the dhoni's engine cut and there was only the sound of snorkels.

The first manta passed beneath me at arm's length, four metres of wing moving with less effort than anything that large has a right to use. Then three more. Then the bay's plankton bloom did what August does in Hanifaru, and the count stopped making sense — barrel rolls in groups, a feeding cyclone of mantas turning like a slow galaxy.

You float at the edge and you are not a spectator and you are not a participant. You are simply present, correctly scaled, and the ocean — the real one, not the beach one — makes its position clear: it does not need us. It merely allows us. I have been in the Himalaya many times. This was the same feeling, wet.