Ocean of Hope

Happy World Manta Ray Day!

manta ray named Cherilyn
Manta Ray named Cherilyn (yes, after me!)

Happy World Manta Ray Day! This is Moby, and I’m a manta ray. I’ve been lucky to be featured in this blog, see Moby the Manta Ray: I Am Not a Devilfish Part 1, Moby the Manta Ray Part 2: How I Am Alike and Different From My Cousins the Sharks and Why Manta Rays Are Becoming Endangered and today I felt the need to bring up the state of the ocean I live in.

We manta rays really are gentle giants, reaching lengths of 23 feet (7 meters) and 6,600 pounds (3000 kg). But all we eat are plankton, the tiny plants and animals floating in the ocean. And we don’t have a stinger on our tail like stingrays. Our only defense is our size, but as you’ll find out, it’s no match for humans.

I face so many threats living in the ocean including pollution (especially plastic), ghost nets, and being fished out by fishermen, to name a few.

I’ve heard things are going poorly on land, but at least you’re not swimming around in and eating garbage! I mean that literally—junk food is nothing compared to the microplastic I ingest everyday.

Microplastic are small bits of plastic. Some pieces are grinded down from larger pieces, and some are manufactured that way (like microbeads in beauty products).

I eat plankton, the tiny plants and animals that live in the sea. The microplastic floats around with the plankton. I filter the seawater around me through my gills, and have finger-like gill rakers on my gills that trap the plankton, which I then swallow.

Each gulp of water brings probably thousands (or more!) microplastic bits in which I swallow. This plastic bioaccumulates in my body, which means that little by little the plastic builds up in my body over time.

You, as humans, carry several pounds of plastic in your body. Even human babies are born with plastic in their bodies.

It’s ironic, the very structure that keeps me alive—my gills—helps me to breathe oxygen from the water around me, and also helps me filter out the food I eat— may lead to my downfall.

You see, me and my manta ray friends’ gill rakers are used in a new controversial Traditional Chinese Medicine formula created in modern times. Some TCM formulas date back 2,200 years but not this one. This means now that manta rays are being hunted exclusively for our gill rakers.


We weren’t always well-liked by fishermen in the past because we manta rays would get caught in their nets and ruin them. They nicknamed us “devil rays” because of that and because our curled up head fins look like devil horns.

Phew, don’t get me started on the dangers of fishing nets to manta rays. If we do get caught in a fisherman’s net there’s no guarantee that we’ll get set free in time to survive.


And there’s something called ghost nets which also lead to many manta rays and other large sea creatures dying. Ghost nets are fishing nets that fishermen have abandoned at sea. Many times they are made of a semi-transparent material called monofilament which looks nearly invisible underwater to most sea creatures.

Once tangled in one, it’s likely that the animal, like a sea turtle, shark or dolphin will die without getting enough oxygen. Sea turtles and dolphins need to get oxygen from air and sharks need to swim constantly to move water over their gills to breathe.

How can you help? You can visit the websites below and donate your time or money. Or just learn more about me and my manta ray friends and spread the word about our plight.

Please vote and let legislators know the health of our oceans matter to you (and me especially!).

Manta Trust
Dr Andrea Marshall, the Queen of the Mantas
Manta Pacific Research Foundation
Marine Mega Fauna Foundation
Wild Aid Manta Ray Program

Why does Shark Stanley and his friends need your help?

SharkStanley Shark Defenders
Find out why Shark Stanley and his friends need your help!

Hi, my name is Shark Stanley and I am a Hammerhead Shark. My friends, Reina the Manta Ray, Pierre the Porbeagle Shark, and Waqi the Oceanic Whitetip Shark, and I live on a coral reef. We are not only featured in a new (free!) children’s book called The Adventures of Shark Stanley and Friends, but we have been traveling all around the terrestrial world. People all around the world want to help keep all sorts of sharks safe from shark finning.

Shark finning is a brutal fishing practice that is very wasteful. Only the shark’s fin is hacked off, and most often the rest of the shark is thrown back into the ocean to die a slow and agonizing death. Shark meat needs to be treated and frozen right away, and most fishing boats don’t have that capability or are targeting other higher priced catches like tuna instead.

Humans around the world also would like to keep manta rays from being killed almost solely for their gill rakers. A specific part of a manta ray’s gill is used in a controversial new Traditional Chinese Medicine formula. Again, like finned sharks, most of the manta ray is not used after their gill rakers are cut off.

If you would like to help, print out a picture of me here (scroll down page) and take a picture with me anywhere in the world.

Shark Defenders would like to collect 5000 photos from all 177 CITES countries, and partner with at least 50 organizations or celebrities. CITES is the abbreviation for the “Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora” and is an international treaty that regulates the trade of endangered wildlife around the world. There is a meeting of CITES scheduled for March of 2013 in Bangkok, Thailand.

Moby the Manta Ray and the Mirror Self-Recognition Test

”manta
Manta Ray investigates itself in a mirror

My earlier posts ended pretty grim because I wanted to share how manta rays are being overfished. But today I just want to share one really cool fact about us manta rays. Did you know that manta rays have the largest brain/body ratio of any fish in the sea? Yup, that includes all other rays, elasmobranchs (sharks and rays), and any other fish you can think of. I’m surprised it took humans so long to figure that out, but it is not like we are the easiest of the marine animals to study.

There is one human, Dr.Csilla Ari, who is running experiments on two of my buddies living at the Atlantis Aquarium in the Bahamas. She recently put a large mirror into the manta rays’ tank to test their ability to recognize themselves. Self-recognition in a mirror has only been shown in very large-brained and “smart” species such as dolphins, higher primates, and elephants. In those experiments a mark is placed on the animals’ forehead, and when the animal sees themselves in the mirror they soon investigate the mark. Animals without self-recognition may charge at the “intruder” or show their normal social behavior towards another animal of the same species.

Unfortunately the mark that the scientists placed on the manta rays did not stay, but maybe in the future I should loan them some of the remoras that are forever stuck to me to use as markers! The two manta rays did spend a lot more time than usual in the area where the mirror was. They also blew bubbles in front of the mirror, which manta rays don’t usually do. They also turned their underbellies towards the mirror. It will be monumental when humans finally figure out how smart we manta rays really are!

Please visit Dr. Ari’s blog for more information on her research.

Why Manta Rays Are Becoming Endangered (Moby the Manta Ray Part 3)

Manta Ray & Traditional Chinese Medicine
Manta Ray (photo by Cherilyn Jose)
It has been brought to my attention that even though I am a very fascinating animal, many humans do not understand why us manta rays need their help to gain protection worldwide. Here are the reasons why:

1. Manta rays are now being targeted by fishermen and killed for their gill rakers, as opposed to being killed by “accidental” by-catch.

2. Gill rakers (the feathery part of my gills that helps me sieve out microscopic food from the seawater around me) are used in a controversial new formula of Traditional Chinese Medicine. That formula is not listed in the classic textbooks.

3. The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) reports that the worldwide catch of manta rays has quadrupled in 7 years.

4. As the IUCN (International Union for Conserving Nature) states, we “are easy to target because of (our) large size, slow swimming speed, aggregative behavior, predictable habitat use, and lack of human avoidance.”

5. In short, we are highly migratory due to the seasonal and geographic variability of our food source, plankton. We are not protected in international waters, nor off the waters of many heavily fished countries.

6. One of the most important reasons we are vulnerable to extinction is that female manta rays only give birth to one pup every 2-3 years, and over her lifetime will only produce as many pups (14) as a great white shark does in one year (16).

7. The good news is that manta ray tourism worldwide brings in $100 million in revenue versus $500 per kilogram of gill rakers. We are worth more alive than dead, duh!

You can help me and my fellow manta rays by visiting Manta Ray of Hope and watching their convincing video and by visiting Project Aware to sign a petition or donate money.