My main purpose for going to Ishigaki was scuba-diving. I`d read that they had manta rays in addition to the usual sea creatures and coral, and I thought it would be cool to see some mantas. I dove for 4 days with Umicoza Diving School, two recreational boat dives each day, and spent about 5 1/2 hours underwater. It was a pretty awesome 5 1/2 hours, and I saw a lot of cool stuff. No mantas, though.
Here are a bunch of pictures, all taken by my Umicoza guides/buddies who faithfully toted cameras for each dive. In no particular order unless otherwise specified ^^
Here I am riding the boat out to a dive site; the shallower water was a gorgeous blue-green in the sunlight, and you can see Ishigaki island in the background.
...hanging around at a safety-stop...
...and with Fannie, one of my fabulous divemaster guides. (I`m the one with perscription goggles... yup, 4-Eyes onland and underwater!)
I`d picked Umicoza for a dive company mainly because they had English-speaking guides. I`ve gone diving with Japanese-only guides in Tsushima and Yonaguni and had mixed experiences... I`m sure there are all kinds of guides speaking all kinds of languages, but in my experiences so far going with English-speaking guides has been the best. Fewer communication issues on where we`re going to dive (like the time in Tsushima when I found out after we got on the boat that they were going cave-diving... I don`t do caves, it was not the open-water dives I thought I`d signed up for). Oh, and it`s more fun log-booking and learning the names of fish/sea creatures in my native English. Even though my electronic dictionary`s pretty fabulous most of the time, it doesn`t have everything. I didn`t need any translation for this guy, though, one of my favorite things from the four days: TURTLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
I think I`ve already ranted in a previous blog entry about the elegance of how turtles swim. I`ve certainly ranted about it in my log-book. It really looks like they`re flying but so effortlessly, as if crows and other wing-pumping birds are trying way too hard. There were other underwater fliers too, but they weren`t quite so elegant. Like this string-ray... yeah, he`s cool. But he can`t slow-gallop down oceanic highways like turtles can. 
Two days of diving I tried to see mantas at Manta Scramble diving point (with another dive elsewhere), and the other two days the north wind was too rough for diving at the manta spot. On the non-manta days, we went to a high-volume cuttlefish spot. I`d never seen or even heard of cuttlefish before, and my first thought was, "That thing`s way funky." 
...Cuttlefish are, in effect, half octopus and half squid. They can also be half the size of me, i.e. way huge. The next picture`s of me and a small cuttlefish.
...and, as it turns out, April is cuttlefish mating season. So I saw many cuttlefish dates ^^
And schools of fish, too... (I think these were wide-mouthed mackarel.)
Here`s a garden of garden eels, sticking their heads out of the sand; we saw them at a couple of sites.
On my last day of dives, the first dive to The Castle of the Lionfish. It was a deep dive, around 33 meters max, the deepest I`ve ever gone. (To get my NAUI advanced scuba diving license, I`d gone on a wreck dive in Key Largo that was about 90 feet). For various scientific and medical reasons, after you surpass a certain depth while diving, you can get something called "nitrogen narcosis." It`s basically caused by the gases (oxygen, etc) in your body reacting to the underwater pressure. In minor cases, it kinda feels like you`re drunk or a little high. (In severe cases, practically guaranteed at 300 feet or more, it can cause hallucinations and unconsciousness.) While the threshold for nitrogen narcosis is different for everyone (and changes even within individuals based on other factors), it can be immediately reversed by rising to a shallower depth.
I`d never felt nitrogen narcosis before, but I felt it a bit at 33 meters. It was a little like being drunk. I looked at this stonefish, for instance, and thought, "Dude, you are such a Sea Monster of the Deep."
After hanging about a bit at-depth, we started our ascent. Fanie found this cool flatworm; I thought it was a squished-out nudibranch until corrected later. Really not what you think of when you hear "flatworm".... rich black color with gold specks.
Later, we found an eel with an attitude. Or maybe hot flashes (needed to stick a head and a leg out of the covers to keep cool... "I`m... too sexy for this rock")
Me with said eel!
This is a white leaf-fish. It looked like it was stuck to the rock and kept waving back and forth... like a leaf!
Can you see the hidden scorpion-fish?
...Can you see him now? ^^
I saw a number of eels and morays throughout the 4 days, almost too many to count. Here are some of the better shots:
There was a lot of what I`m going to call "Antler-coral," too. I`m not sure what its real name is.
Oh, and Crown of Thorns starfish EVERYWHERE. Seriously... always keeping one eye roaming for them because I didn`t want to accidentally brush against it (they`re poisonous in a nasty kind of way). Oh, and an interesting-looking sea cucumber on the left.
Lionfish!! ^^ I saw a ton of these-- 8 or 10-- on the deep dive to The Castle of the Lionfish, and a few others scattered here and there.
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