Manta Season is here...

Finally the manta’s have arrived at Reethi Rah, yayyy…. For those of you who haven’t see a Manta ray or don’t know what one is, don’t worry, I will explain what these majestic animals are and go from there…..

Manta Rays are cartilaginous ‘elasmobranch’ fish. This means they are close relatives of all sharks and rays, and  therefore have a skeleton made of cartilage, not bone. Most fish in the oceans are actually bony fish, leaving only about 1100 cartilaginous fish; 500 species which are sharks and 550 species of ray.There is a huge variety and abundance of ray species around the world; stingrays, skates, eagle rays, electric rays. The majority of these are bottom dwellers, whose broad flattened bodies are superbly adapted to this way of life. Manta rays are actually part of the stingray group belonging to the family Mobulidae. As the name suggests stingrays have a barb at the base of their tail which they use for defense against predators. Manta rays don’t actually have a barb, instead they rely on their speed and size to elude predation.

The manta ray is the largest of all the rays. They are free swimming with huge diamond shaped bodies. They continue to swim from the time they are born until the time they die! They must keep swimming in order to keep the water flowing over their gills. There are two species of manta ray, the resident reef manta (Manta alfredi) can be up to 4m wide and the gaint oceanic omanta (Manta birostris) can be up to 7m!!! I have never seen an oceanic manta but they are here in the Maldives, they are long distance travelers spending all their time out in the open sea. In the Maldives the resident mantas are very common. They tend to stay in shallow water close to the reef with much smaller home ranges – 100s of miles as opposed to 1000s.

Manta rays are solitary animals but they come together and aggregate at feeding sites and cleaning stations. Despite their large size they feed on some of the smallest organisms in the sea known as plankton. Cephalic fins on their head unfurl to channel the water into their huge mouth, and using their gills like sieves, they filter out the plankton from the water. Mantas are known to make seasonal migrations in order to take advantage of particular abundant areas of food and at this time of year from January to April one of the places they can be found is on the West side of North male Atoll, right were Reethi Rah is located.

So far this year not many mantas have been spotted yet but this morning when I went out to our House Reef to do some work on the coral frames, I was greeted by 8 Mantas, wow, what a very nice and unexpected surprise. Manta season has finally arrived, fantastic. They were feeding on the surface and as I had my dive gear on I just lay on my back under the water and watched them glide over me. They were all around, swimming in circles to collect their food. They remind me of flying saucers for some reasons, maybe it’s their huge open mouths and their long wing-like pectoral fins slicing through the water. 

While working in the Maldives I have been lucky enough to see mantas many many times, once I was in the water with over 80 of them swimming around me. This was at a very special manta feeding spot unique to the Maldives called Hanifaru Bay in Baa Atoll. It is one of the worlds most spectacular underwater events. As you can imagine I was completely blown away by the whole experience. Anyway, it really doesn’t matter how many times you see these beautiful animals, each and every time is just as amazing as the last. They are just such fascinating and captivating creatures to watch, when you see one nothing else really matters, its just you and the mantas, time stands still! That’s what I love about my job, you just never know what you are going to see next, days can be full of surprises. Even better, this afternoon I was in the water with 2 guests putting their corals frames on the house reef when a single manta ray just happened to swim right past us!!! My guests had never seen a manta before which can be quite a scary sight if you don’t know what you're looking at, are they dangerous or harmless, will they eat me???  Especially when their huge mouths are heading right towards you. Well of course they are not dangerous, in fact they can be quite shy and swim away from you, however when there is plenty of food for them in the water, they really don’t care who is around. They almost put on a show for you, twisting and barrel rolling in the water to collect their food, you could watch them all day. My guests were so happy, they saw their very first manta, it was a wonderful sight and hopefully something they will remember forever.

The only unfortunate thing was that I didn’t have my camera with me, how gutting, I have plenty of photos of mantas but to identify them you need to take a photo of the black spot pattern on their ventral surface in between the gills. Every manta has a unique spot pattern, which can therefore be used for identification, like a human fingerprint. This enables the development of photo-id databases so ultimately you can estimate their population sizes and migration patterns. After 6 years of data collection, the Maldivian Manta Ray Project has already identified over 2300 different mantas from the Maldives, with new individuals being sighted on a regular basis. Conditions were perfect as well, I was thinking at the time maybe i could draw the spot patterns on my slate, hmmm, yeah no chance! What is even more worrying though is that in recent years, a fishery for these animals has developed with devastating effects on their populations globally, but I will blog about this another time.

For lots more interesting information on Manta Rays the please check out the Manta Trust website here. The trust was formed to coordinate global research to conserve manta rays while raising valuable awareness for these amazing animals. It’s a very impressive site and worth a look. Although I forgot my camera today I have left you with some photos of my previous manta encounters, it will give you an idea on just how impressive these animals are…..