Two things to cover in this post! First up, we finally got to visit the dive site called Anau; frequent home of the Bora Bora manta rays - exciting! Secondly the fantastic Cécile Berthe who is working as our Project Manager and overseeing/helping us out from her position at the Insular Research Center and Observatory of the Environment (also known as CRIOBE) has agreed to write a guest post. On to anauNow as fun as it would be to just dive every day for the next 6 months (and believe me we considered it) we’ve been on a self-imposed diving ban the last few days so we could work on some project bits. The agreed exception was if there was a trip to Anau on the cards and this morning we got the call that we were on! Anau is round on the East side of the island and close to the coast. It’s so close to shore in fact that if there is heavy rain all the soil and silt that runs off from the mountain turns the water to soup. Diving in that kind of water is not only rather difficult but also you can’t see your hand in front of your face let alone a manta ray! The reason it’s so popular with mantas is that it’s highly productive…this means full of delicious plankton, a manta’s favourite food. It didn’t disappoint and we were treated to three reef mantas ranging from a small one at around 1.5m to a large female at 2.5-3m. So awesome, great to know they are around and what a start to our manta diving! Above photo by Bex of one of the mantas we saw today…all the planktonic food in the water makes it great for manta rays but not so great for taking photos. Hello from CécileHopefully this is the first of what will become a regular feature of this blog. We’d like to introduce you to some of the manta-friendly people we meet along our way. Folks that have helped us out with the project, with diving, with manta info etc. and Cécile is a great starting point. She is always on hand for any questions we have and has led this project and directed us since we’ve been in French Polynesia. Over to you Cécile… “My name is Cécile. I’ve lived in French Polynesia for 5 years and work at the Insular Research Center and Observatory of the Environment as communication assistant. I’ve dived since highschool. But as I am from the North of France, I used to dive in lakes or in the sea where you barely see your hand…I dreamed about coral reef ecosystems through aquariums I visited that showed me all the beauty the underwater world has to offer.
One day I had the chance to fly to the Pacific islands. My first Manta encounter happened in New Caledonia. She was alone and we were three divers amazed by this huge female flying in front of us. Since then I’ve had more chances to spend many more times with Manta rays in French Polynesia, where they seem to have a peaceful place to live. Here they are not chased, just observed by passionate people. I decided to join a local organization, the Observatoire des requins et des raies de Polynésie (ORP), that works to increase knowledge about these animals and encourage sustainable behaviours around them so that humans and sharks/rays can live together for a long time.” Thank you Cécile and thanks for all your help so far. Until next time, Graham
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Never underestimate a grey day. Magical things can, and often do, happen on the most overcast and uninspiring of days. Scuba divers know this well, as do us Brits. Early this morning we scampered down to Topdive’s Vaitape site excited for a dive or two to test out some of our new equipment and to get our fins wet for the first time since arriving. A fortnight of rather biblical, tropical thunderstorms has meant a dry week for us (by which I mean no diving, we still got very wet!) so we were absolutely desperate to get into the ocean. After loading up the boat our wetsuits were already soaked through with rain and our hair stylishly plastered to our faces. We set out on a choppy sea, heading away from the island to find clearer water. Upon arriving at our site and starting to set up our equipment I soon felt an unmistakable hint of sea sickness. A non-scuba diver might well look at this group of loonies, bobbing about in a small boat on a choppy sea, windswept and soaked to the bone, readying to jump into the uninviting steely void heaving beneath them and question what on earth they were doing; and at this point in time, with my stomach churning, I have to admit I was questioning it myself a little too. Staggering to the back of the boat, green around the gills, graceful as a drunk seagull, I stepped out of the grey, drizzly day and into the blue. As soon as you descend into the ocean on a day like this two things happen, your sea sickness vanishes and so does the miserable weather. The underwater world, though a little less bright than usual, is still a gorgeous and inviting place to be; it is almost a shock to arrive back at the surface and be greeted by such a colourless scene an hour later. During our two dives we were treated to multiple Blacktips, my first Lemon Shark, courting (successfully from what we could see!) Spotted Eagle Rays and a big chunky Barracuda as well as beautiful corals, fish, crustaceans and lots more. Most excitingly of all between our two dives we spotted our first manta ray here in French Polynesia and Graham and I were allowed to jump in briefly in to take a closer look. A small (by manta standards) ray at around 2m wide, the Y-shaped markings on its back told us it was a Reef Manta. Project on!
We returned to shore feeling thoroughly satisfied, sea sickness long forgotten, and were greeting by the first glimpse of sunshine in the sky that we’ve seen all week. Thanks for reading. Bex So as promised, let's get some clarity on what a mobula ray is shall we? The Mobulids are a family of rays that contain the two species of Manta Ray and nine species of Mobula Ray. So most simply mantas and mobulas are cousins. I mean phylogenetically of course, not in a first cousin Claire that we only see once a year at Christmas kind of a way. Manta and Mobula are the names of the two genus’ in the family Mobulidae and they are very similar to each other indeed. The main differentiating feature is their size with adult mantas generally much larger but the shape of their mouths and their cephalic (that’s a fancy word for head) fins differs between the genus’ too. The photo above shows just one of the nine Mobula Ray species (which are commonly known as Devil Rays hence the hilarious title of this post) and like mantas, they too are beautiful animals. As nice as mobulas are (and we hope to see a few of them whilst we are out here!) the two species of manta ray are the reason we’re in Bora Bora. One is called the Reef Manta (Manta alfredi) and the other the Oceanic Manta (Manta birostris). As Bex mentioned last time out they are both magnificent beasts and a large Oceanic Manta can get to over 7m across! They’re quite tricky to tell apart as although the Oceanics get much larger it is of course possible to encounter juvenile and sub adults which confuses things slightly. The easiest way is to look at them from above and see what shape the black markings on their heads are. The Oceanic Manta has a T-shaped shoulder stripe and the Reef Manta has a Y-shaped marking in a similar position. For more info on how to tell them apart visit the Spot the Difference page on the Manta Trust website. The photos below show a Reef Manta (left hand side with Y-shaped black patch) and an Oceanic Manta (right hand side with T-shaped black patch) next to each other. Hopefully you can see the difference in their patterns? The two species have quite different habits with the Reef Manta (as the name suggests) associating with small groups of islands or reefs in shallow waters. They tend to be highly social sticking to a specific home range whilst following seasonal changes in food availability. We call this a resident species and it is sometimes known as the Resident Reef Manta. The Oceanic Manta is in contrast a more open water species spending the majority of its time feeding out in the big blue! It comes in to reefs to visit cleaning stations or at particular times of year for plentiful feeding. (By the way, a cleaning station is like an underwater carwash for rays, fish, sharks, turtles etc. where they get little parasites or dead skin removed by a crew of specialised cleaner shrimp and fish. These are awesome and I’m sure we’ll post more on this later!). It is during these times, when the oceanics are more coastal, that if we are lucky enough we get a chance to dive with them.
There are very few places in the world where one can hope to see both species in one place and French Polynesia is one of those places. Whether we do see both species together and, if we do, how they interact with each other is one of the reasons we are here. Studying this is just one exciting aspect of the research we hope to carry out through observing them over the next 6 months. More details on our project and what we hope to achieve in the coming posts. Thanks for reading! Graham Hello, welcome and thank you for visiting our mobula blogula! I am Bex, I work at the SEA LIFE London Aquarium but along with my partner Graham (also of the London Aquarium) have taken a sabbatical and moved to Bora Bora, French Polynesia, to work for the Manta Trust. We would really love to share some of our experiences and learnings with you over what we hope will be a really exciting, productive and manta-filled 6 months. It is only our second day on the island of Bora Bora and we are currently sitting on a veranda gazing out over an overcast but still stunning view of the ocean and island volcano, nervously listening to the sound of rain hitting the corrugated and not entirely waterproof roof that we hope will keep our laptops safe and dry. It truly is a wonderful part of the world to be in (though it looks unnervingly like the island from Jurassic Park) but we are not here for the views or the tropical climate. We’re here for the manta rays! So what is a manta ray you might well ask? Manta rays are some of nature’s gentle giants; they reach enormous proportions yet feed only on tiny fish and zooplankton. The largest mantas can reach over 7m from wing-tip to wing-tip and weigh in at about 2 tonnes. Just stop and think about that for a moment. A single, large manta ray probably covers more m² than the average London flat and weighs as much as a rhino. They. Are. BIG. Gliding through the ocean, driven by their epic, beating pectoral fins, swooping and rolling like acrobats to filter plankton from the water with their specialised gills, mantas are effortlessly graceful and mesmerising to behold. They have the largest brain to body ratio of any fish and are believed to be intelligent, sociable beings with distinct personalities. Some individuals are known to seek out interaction with humans, seeming to enjoy the feeling of diver’s bubbles tickling their bellies. Manta's are everything you could want in a sea creature; big, beautiful and mysterious. Scientists have only been studying mantas properly for around a decade so there is still a lot to learn! Making the Manta Trust's work and our time here in Bora Bora all the more important and exciting.
Now it is getting dark and my tummy is rumbling so the time has come to wrap this up, evict the tiny gecko that is using my laptop case as cover to ambush delicious ants and head back inside. Thank you for reading! More posts to follow soon. Bex P.S. You might well be wondering why we've called this blog the 'mobula blogula' and what a mobula is? All will be revealed in the next post! |
AuthorMarine conservation fanatics from the city of London on a manta ray research adventure in French Polynesia Archives |