Photograph by Andrea Marshall
"On one special day we encountered dozens of reef manta rays feeding at the
surface in Nusa Penida," Marine Megafauna Foundation cofounder and National
Geographic explorer Andrea Marshall says. "When these giant animals feed they
are distracted, and snorkelers can approach them quite closely without
disturbing them. It is almost like they go into a trance.
"This individual spent about a half an hour with us, in quite shallow water,
weaving in and out between us while feeding on densely concentrated plankton in
the surface waters," she says. "As it approached me it reared up a bit and
flashed its ventral surface (belly) at me, giving me a glimpse of its natural
spot patterning on its underside, which we use to identify between different
rays."
Marshall and her team recently created Manta Matcher, an automated online
manta ray database. It "stores the patterning of each manta ray sighted across
the world and automatically checks for a match every time a new entry is
uploaded," Marshall says. "This system will allow researchers to follow the
lives of these elusive animals and learn more about their movements and behavior
over time."
