Yesterday I wrote in my journal about how easy it is to get accustomed to something extraordinary.

A room warden at the Prado Museum will probably not be as excited at the sight of a masterpiece by Velazquez as a tourist will. Likewise, after 10 days of diving at Kingman we appear to be used to seeing sharks, dozens of large red snappers, and healthy corals on every dive. We have seen between five and 24 sharks on every single dive. It would take years of diving in the Caribbean to see as many sharks–without feeding, of course.

Can one be satiated of beauty? Is there a threshold beyond which good news is not news anymore? As of yesterday, maybe because of the toll that the physical effort is having on me, I thought it might be possible. Today, to my delight, I was proven wrong. Once again, nature showed us her power to fascinate humans.

This morning the sea was the calmest we have witnessed, so we traveled to the fore reef at the southern side of Kingman. On our first dive, Mark and Tyler collected some water for microbial analyses while Alan and I counted fish. The best part of the dive is typically the last ten minutes, when we have finished our data collection and can observe the reef without the constraints of our scientific methods.

If we hadn’t stayed on the bottom for those extra minutes, we would have missed an exceptional sight. We were kicking hard, trying to catch up with the strong current, when a few meters away, without any apparent movement, a giant devil’s manta ray, Mobula taparacana, slid upstream.

It was an unusual sight, for the giant was three meters wide and totally black – they are usually black on the top and white on the bottom.

Behind it was the deep blue.

After the second dive, our eyes were delighted with a still more unusual gift. A giant grouper, Epinephelus lanceolatus, four feet long (140 cm) was observing us ten meters below. Its body was deep and round, dark brown mottled with beige spots, and its fins were splashed with a delicate yellow rim. It must have weighed one hundred pounds. We slowly dove to the bottom, trying not to scare it away. The grouper approached us with the curiosity of a species that has been depleted to local extinction at many sites in the Pacific. This is the largest of all reef fishes, which can grow to more than eight feet (270 cm). The individual we saw might have been 20 years old, and may as well live a few more decades here in the protected waters of Kingman.

Meanwhile, ten grey reef sharks were circling above our heads. What else could we expect? Not a striped marlin seven foot long. Kenrick, our skipper this morning, was snorkeling near the boat, watching our movements near the giant grouper. Every so often he has the habitude of turning around to check if something is checking him. And there it was, a huge marlin that was as surprised as Kenrick but slowly swam away towards us. Kenrick screamed underwater and pointed to the marlin. We saw it dive past us into the deep. Alan, who has the virtue of making me laugh underwater on every dive, wrote on his slate, "Where is the whale?”

We did not need a whale, although that, predictably, made me laugh.

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