Manta Ray

Photo By: Wildlife Conservation Society

Using the latest satellite tracking technology, conservationists from the Wildlife Conservation Society, the University of Exeter, and the Government of Mexico recently completed a ground-breaking study on a mysterious ocean giant: the manta ray.

The research team has produced the first published study on the use of satellite telemetry to track the open-ocean journeys of the world’s largest ray, which can grow up to 25 feet in width. Researchers say the manta ray—listed as “Vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)—has become increasingly threatened by fishing and accidental capture and now needs more protection.

“Almost nothing is known about the movements and ecological needs of the manta ray, one of the ocean’s largest and least-known species,” said Dr. Rachel Graham, lead author on the study and director of WCS’s Gulf and Caribbean Sharks and Rays Program. “Our real-time data illuminate the previously unseen world of this mythic fish and will help to shape management and conservation strategies for this species.”

Like baleen whales and whale sharks, manta rays are filter feeders that swim through clouds of plankton with mouths agape. In spite of its malevolent, bat-like appearance, the manta ray—sometimes referred to as the “devilfish”—is harmless to humans and lacks the stinger of the better-known stingray. The manta ray possesses the highest brain to body ratio of all sharks and rays and gives birth to live young, usually one or two “pups” every one or two years. Manta rays are apparently declining in the Caribbean and in other tropical regions of the world’s oceans, in part because they are captured for shark bait and a demand for gill rakers (small, finger-like structures that filter out the ray’s minute zooplankton prey) in the traditional Chinese medicinal trade.

> Related: More Pictures by Wildlife Conservation Society

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