Search for the Rays: Part V

The water is surprisingly warm for being about eight o'clock.
It is dark everywhere, all I can see are flashes of light from about thirty feet down where the scuba divers are swimming along.
I looked straight ahead and about 150 feet away I see a huge column of light and a ton of fish swimming around it. I swim over, slowly as if I am conserving my energy for some boost of speed later. Approaching the light I get hit by a few other snorkelers who don't seem to know what they are doing at all, some don't even have flippers. Amateurs.
Then I see the grand spectacle, in its entirety. The lights jutting up from the ground make a giant oval on the surface, swimming back a little ways, I see all of these snorkelers huddled around this oval, strangers to one another, making sure not to bump into any one.
I don't even care, I swim right up, get right in between two people (looking back on that I think they were holding hands, might have been newly weds, go me) and wait.
A minute goes by, then two. Sitting there, not taking my eyes off of the bottom of the ocean where manta rays were promised
Five minutes.
Eight minutes.
Ten minutes.
I almost lose my focus when I see her. Lefty*. So majestic, just gliding through the water like a synchronized swimmer. Every move looks so planned yet she changes direction like everything is whimsical, it's all a game.
Yet, it's not a game. At this moment, lefty is fighting for her life, trying to get all the nutrients she needs from microscopic animals. She has to eat a third of her weight (roughly 800 pounds) a day or she will die. This is her main feeding time. I thought she was not even interested in us hovering above and below her. I was wrong.
I'm sitting there, on the top of the water watching her eat, push these plankton into her mouth with her devil horns**.
Then Lefty did the unexpected. She was about Three feet below me and swam by and when I thought she was gone, she did a barrel roll, brushing up against my wetsuit.
I blinked, not believing my senses. A manta ray just touched me!? Actually essentially gave a lap dance.
This happened a few more times, with myself cherishing the moment even more ever single time. Then, with as much stealth as she came, Lefty had gone, down to the bottom of the ocean to find more plankton and check out the divers down there.
I got back on the boat speechless.
That's where this story is wrapped up, me rocking side to side on a 40-foot boat with my eyes wide as dinner plates and mind completely boggled. It was fun, I would recommend it and do it again if I ever got the chance.
Finally signing off this Hawai'i vacation

Bosque

*Lefty gets her name because her left horn (defined below) is broken and just kind of hangs there while she eats.
**The horns are essentially scoopers to help the flow of water into the Rays mouth