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Manta Patrol: Freediving with Rays in the Maldives
By Michael Buckley

© Guy Stevens

I am gazing in wonder at a flying carpet. Underwater. It's a manta ray, winging along with the greatest of ease, keeping an eye on me. And I say "eye" singular because each eye is positioned to either side of its front lobes, spaced well apart.

Correction. Make that two flying carpets. Right over the top of the first one comes another manta, flying straight toward me. I wanted to get close to mantas, but not this close. The creature has a huge wingspan—some 500 kilograms of flying carpet is set on a head-on collision course—and I have nowhere to go. I am in panic mode. But at the last moment, it nose-dives into the depths. Is this the manta ray's idea of a joke?

© Guy Stevens

The giants wheel back—both of them. There's no doubt in my mind now that they are eyeballing me with curiosity. They know exactly where I am, and are avoiding any collision course, despite a three-meter wingspan. They show off with a stunning underwater ballet, winging along effortlessly, performing acrobatic turns. This undulating "choreography" goes on for several minutes—the maximum time that I can breath-hold underwater—but seems to last much longer. The mantas have let me into their world for an instant, an instant that is truly magical. A world of underwater acrobats.

Underwater Intelligence
More marine encounters over the course of the next week convince me that these rays are truly bizarre creatures, charismatic, graceful, and gentle despite their size.

I am on a vessel dedicated to tracking them: the Manta Trust research boat, patrolling Baa Atoll in the Maldives. In 2011, Baa Atoll was designated a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. This was largely due to its unique reef manta population, plus the efforts of Guy Stevens, who heads the research project here. The Maldives hosts the world's largest known population of reef mantas, estimated at over 6,000 resident rays.

Being on board this converted fishing vessel offers a glimpse into another world: the world of marine researchers, patiently probing the mysteries of these enigmatic creatures. How long do mantas live? How often do they reproduce? How do they avoid predators? Project manager Niv Froman is scanning the waters from the top deck, checking for mantas cruising near the surface, chasing plankton. Making spotting easy is a large ray that goes airborne—flying through the air near the boat in a spectacular display of breaching. Two volunteer research assistants get ready to freedive and ID the acrobatic ray by photographing the distinctive spot-patterns on its underside--a pattern that never changes. Once in the research database, mantas are given nicknames like Rocket, Flappy Jack, and Bubbles (who likes to be tickled by bubbles from divers).

According to Guy Stevens, these gentle giants have a high tolerance for "bubble creatures" entering their marine domain. The bottlenosed dolphins we see playing in the bows of the boat will dive down to lose any snorkelers who enter the water close by. By contrast, mantas will actively interact with divers and snorkelers, most likely out of curiosity. In the early days of scuba-diving—back in the 1970s—mantas were real flying carpets: divers were known to hitch a ride by holding onto one.

Guy tells me these rays have the largest brain to body weight ratio of any living fish. Does that indicate higher intelligence? Quite possibly, says Guy, if problem-solving is a parameter. Mantas are among the very few marine creatures that will actually seek out humans to solve problems, such as being half-strangled by a fishing net. A man-made problem requires a man-made solution. Numerous times, Guy says, he has been approached by mantas tangled with netting. After the hapless creature is cut loose, it often follows him for some time in an apparent show of gratitude.

Mantas never sleep: from the moment they're born, they're on the move. How can they operate like this? "Well," says Stevens, "it's not sleep as we know it, but mantas have relaxation modes, rather like auto-pilot or cruise control, where they glide using very little energy." Relaxation time includes visiting a "cleaning station". About 50 cleaning stations have been discovered around the Maldives. At these sites, mantas wait patiently in turn to hover in over a reef and have parasites removed by cleaner-fish. Rather like going to a car wash or the hairdresser's. Divers visit these sites too, hoping to see a manta line-up.

But the ultimate place to see line-ups is Hanifaru Bay. If conditions are ideal here, mantas aggregate to gorge on swarms of microscopic plankton trapped in the bay. At Hanifaru Bay, Stevens says researchers have counted aggregations of 50 mantas (and once counted 240 of them total) engaged in a feeding frenzy, gliding along with sometimes two or three stacked on top of each other. Other times, they curl up and perform loop-the-loop barreling maneuvers to gobble up more plankton.

Endangered Species on the Menu
Mantas are filter-feeders: they use their feathery gill plates to strain out plankton after ingesting large volumes of seawater. This remarkable filtering ability has been touted as nothing short of miraculous by Chinese medicine vendors—who are promoting "health tonics", brewed from dried manta gill plates mixed with ginseng and herbs. Chinese medicine vendors promote the belief that by eating a particular species, the consumer can acquire the super-powers associated with that species—which is a load of hogwash. Having depleted the world of sharks to make sharkfin soup, they are moving along to the next victim: rays.

Chinese medicine has a tradition dating back 2,000 years, but gill plates from various rays have only been added to the "menu" in the last decade, touted for their supposed detoxifying and purifying properties. And during that decade, fishing of mantas and mobulas has increased many-fold, leading to a precipitous drop in the population. In some areas, a 30-percent drop; in other areas, the drop is over 80 percent. Manta cartilage has also been substituted for shark cartilage in Chinese medicinal potions.

Even in the Maldives, where mantas and sharks are fully protected species, rays are declining in number, perhaps due to climate-change factors such as weaker monsoons. In the Maldives, numerous Marine Protected Areas have been established where fishing is highly restricted. Getting these MPAs started has resulted from the efforts of researchers like Guy Stevens. Stevens is a British marine biologist who came to the Maldives to work as a guide with Four Seasons Resort. Fascinated by mantas, he stayed on to establish a marine research center, with Four Seasons as the major patron.

Four Seasons Landaa Giraavaru is a super-luxury resort with a difference—a deep commitment to the environment. Coral reefs in the Maldives were severely damaged by coral bleaching in the 1990s and were again hit by the tsunami of 2004. Four Seasons has pioneered a solution to the devastation—in the form of reefscaping. This means building reefs from scratch by attaching small pieces of coral on circular metal frames and then submerging the frames. Over time, the mini-reefs grow and marine critters move into their shiny new coral homes. While I am at the Marine Discovery Centre, a Korean family purchases two big frames, and their kids tie on tiny pieces of coral. Their names are inscribed on a small plate attached. A new initiative here is the Fish Lab, where species like seahorses and Maldivian clownfish are propagated. This is a start-up for selling to aquariums, providing income for local communities, and preventing poaching of wild species.

Slaughter of the Rays
This story has a grisly ending. On a stop-over in Sri Lanka, I witness the dark side of the manta life-cycle. Dark meaning the end of the world, as rays know it. Dark meaning horrific slaughter. Dark meaning before sunrise, when the fish markets in Negombo are at their busiest, unloading fresh catch. Actually, "bycatch" would be closer—everything that vast nets haul up, useful or not. The haul includes hammerhead sharks, baby sharks torn from the bellies of their mothers, whole devil rays, and manta ray pieces. Mantas are too large and heavy to carry, so they are hacked into three or four pieces, often while still alive, to enable hauling along the docks with hooks. This is a morgue for sharks and rays.

Sri Lanka has emerged as the number one fishery of mantas and mobulas world-wide: their dried gill plates end up in Guangzhou, China. It is highly disturbing to see these magnificent creatures chopped into pieces. Mantas never harm humans, but humans slaughter them—just to feed the whims of bogus Chinese medicine vendors. The fishing of rays in Sri Lanka is mostly driven by the demand for dried gill plates in Chinese medicine, since ray meat is considered low-grade and cannot compare to sought-out fish like yellowfin tuna.

A dead ray may sell for US$150 in Sri Lanka, but the same manta—alive—is worth exponentially more as a key draw for dive-tourism in places like the Maldives. A recent study of manta ray dive-tourism worldwide estimates it is worth US$140 million annually, compared with perhaps US$5 million annually for fisheries income. Mantas are a key draw for liveaboard dive-boats and for freediving snorkelers at numerous sites around the world, from Mexico to Mozambique.

SAVING MANTAS
In early 2013, manta rays were added to the CITES list of endangered species. This advocates a complete ban on the fishing of mantas, but the ruling is not enforceable. For more information about diving with these amazing creatures, and about the campaign to save them, see www.mantatrust.org.

Click here to see video of the Manta Rays swimming in the waters of the Maldives!

Michael Buckley is a frequent traveler to southeast-Asian and Himalayan regions. His e-books are available through Smashwords.com—just search: buckeroo. Buckley is author of a number of books on Tibet (listed at www.himmies.com) and filmmaker for several short documentaries about Tibet (www.WildYakFilms.com).

All photos by the author except where indicated.