![]() ![]() ![]() Manta rays are fished for their meat, and, increasingly, their gill plates. Because they’re long-living and slow to reproduce, localized populations have a difficult time bouncing back when fished. ![]() Threatsīoth sub-species of manta ray are classified as vulnerable by the IUCN. Babies look like smaller version of adult manta rays when born and can immediately survive without parental care. Pregnancy lasts about 12 to 13 months and manta rays give birth to live pups. Reproductionįemale manta rays hit sexual maturity at around eight to 10 years old and tend to give birth once every couple of years, usually to one pup, or occasionally two. Studies have also shown that manta rays are able to create mental maps of their environment, through smell and visual cues, indicating highly developed long-term memory. Studies have shown that manta rays may recognize themselves in the mirror, an ability indicative of high cognitive function, also shown by dolphins, primates, and elephants. Manta rays have the largest brain-to-size ratio of any cold-blooded fish. Many individual manta rays return to the same stations over and over. Manta rays make regular visits to cleaning stations-spots on a coral reef where sea animals go to be cleaned by smaller creatures-where they stay still for several minutes while cleaner fish remove parasites and dead skin. They’re considered predators and hunt deep below the surface of the sea. Giant manta rays live alone or in small groups, typically congregating to feed. They use creative techniques when feeding, often doing repeated somersaults to stay in a single spot that is packed with krill, or chain-feeding-following each other in a circle, mouths open, to create a cyclone effect, trapping food in a spiral. Habitat and feedingīoth species of manta ray are filter feeders: they swim with their mouths wide open, drawing in zooplankton and krill, which they sift through rows of tiny rakes that line their mouths called gill plates. While the smaller reef manta has an impressive wingspan of about 11 feet wide on average, the giant oceanic manta ray-the largest species of ray-can have a wingspan of up to 29 feet. In 2008, researchers discovered that there are actually two distinct species: the reef manta ray, which tends to live along coastlines in the Indo-Pacific, and the giant oceanic manta ray, which lives in all the world’s major oceans, spending most of its life far from land. Manta rays have two horn-shaped fins protruding from the front of their heads, which has also given them the nickname “devil fish.”įor decades, scientists thought there was just one species of manta ray. “Manta” means blanket or cloak in Spanish, describing the look of the animals’ large, flat, diamond-shaped bodies, which are characterized by triangular pectoral fins. The sea creatures live in tropical, subtropical, and temperate ocean waters across the globe. Scuba divers and snorkelers usually encounter the manta rays from the surface to 80 feet of depth.Manta rays-highly intelligent and highly threatened-are the largest rays in the world. birostris, also called “pelagic” manta rays are rarely seen.īased on current scientific observation, we know that coastal manta rays can go deeper than 700 feet (214 m) for short periods of time, but they spend most of their time in shallower waters. The family of manta rays that roam the waters of the coast of the Big Island, Hawaii are considered M. We don’t know yet if Loulou is an outlier, or if mantas actually swim further than we thought they did! However, we recently spotted Loulou Ray in two different locations around the Big Island, located 55 miles from each other. The “ Kona family” we know well (reef mantas who live around Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii) is most frequently observed at 3 different manta ray viewing sites around Kona. Until recently, we believed the reef mantas’ home range would be approximately 90 square miles (145 km²), which is roughly 30 miles up and down the coast and 3 miles offshore. We don’t have much (if any) official data on migration patterns or swimming ranges of any type of manta ray. ![]()
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