Earlier this summer, aquarists Austin Brayton and Jackie Anderson camped on a remote island in Maine to assist with Project Puffin, an Audubon Society project designed to restore populations of these clownish little seabirds. Read Part 1 of the series here. In this post, we join Jackie on Matinicus Rock.

June 11, 2014 
Meanwhile on Matinicus Rock

On my first day here I settled into my living quarters, which were in the attic of the boathouse. At first I was a little sad that my living space was away from everyone else’s, as they were sleeping in the lighthouse, but I soon found out that my new home for the next two weeks had a pretty awesome upside. In addition to being able to spread out a bit and dry clothes on a line in my own room, I could also look out the window located right next to my bunk and see an infinite number of stars at night and see more than a half dozen species of birds in the morning without even getting out of my sleeping bag! What a treat! Also, the guillemots love the boat ramp and I saw them chasing each other around every morning and heard them scurrying around on the roof above my head.

Boarding in the boat house

Upon my arrival on the island, I brought my stuff into the boathouse and began to help ferry bags of gear and groceries up the boardwalk to the lighthouse. The lighthouse is situated right in the middle of the tern colony and there is a boardwalk going from the boathouse and the outhouse up to the lighthouse. Terns nest on either side of the boardwalk and see any sort of activity on the boardwalk as trespassing, and they take a very aggressive stand against it, cackling, screaming and dive-bombing. I even had them knock my sunglasses right off my head!

View of Matinicus Rock from the lobster boat that delivered volunteers to island

After settling in here and unpacking my gear, our team started trapping and banding Arctic terns. I was set up in a section of the tern colony with two treadle traps. These traps are basically large wire cages with an open bottom, a bird sized opening on the top, and a little trap door on the front. To capture birds, you replace their eggs with wooden eggs (so that they do not accidentally damage their eggs in the trap) and place the trap over their nest. Eventually they want to sit on their nest badly enough that they ignore the new wire thing over top of it and they walk inside. When they walk in, they pass over a ramp that trips the trap door and are trapped. Most of the time, they just calmly sit there on top of the fake eggs until you move. Then we gently remove them from the trap and weigh, measure and band them and return their real eggs. They go right back to their nests as if nothing had happened.

Tern traps on Matinicus Rock

We trapped terns for a few days, and like Austin, we had to stop on a few rainy mornings so that we didn’t scare them off of their nests when it was too wet and cold for the eggs.

— Jackie

June 11, 2014 
Introductions

This summer aquarist Jackie Anderson and I had the amazing opportunity to participate in Project Puffin.  Project Puffin was started by the Audubon Society in 1973 to restore puffins to islands in the Gulf of Maine where they had nested until the late 1800s when they were largely exterminated due to hunting for their meat, feathers and eggs.

A puffin in its burrow

In an attempt to restore the colonies, young puffins were brought to the islands from Newfoundland, which has a healthy population of the birds. Eventually some of these puffins returned to nest on the Gulf of Maine islands and their population has been slowly increasing. Tern colonies have also been restored to the islands through the efforts of the project. Today staff members, interns and volunteers spend the breeding season on these islands to implement management activities that help the colonies, like removal of invasive vegetation, and to monitor the health of the seabird populations through gathering data for several long term studies. The primary focus of my work at the Aquarium is our shorebird exhibit which features local shorebirds (several species of plover and sandpiper) as well as two common terns, so I was very excited to participate in some hands-on field work and to be able to observe terns in the colony while also helping with their conservation.

Camping on Seal Island

Jackie and I went as volunteers to two different islands, Matinicus Rock and Seal Island, where we stayed for two weeks. Matinicus Rock features a light house. Seal Island has a tiny cabin with a propane stove for cooking. The participants sleep in their own individual tents. Neither of the islands has running water, but getting to spend so much time out in nature certainly made this minor hardship worthwhile.

Banding birds is tricky business!

During my first day on Seal Island I got to observe Arctic Terns being trapped, measured, banded and released.  The data is used for a long term demographic study of Arctic Terns in the Gulf of Maine.  Arctic Terns, as well as several other species of tern including Common Terns, have been declining in population in the US and information gathered through the efforts of Project Puffin can help us to understand why and can identify the best management practices.  On my second day, I got to band adult terns myself which was a little nerve-racking as you have to apply considerable pressure with one hand in order to close the metal ID band with special pliers while holding the bird gently in your other hand.

-Austin

Click here to keep reading Part 2!

The Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF) recently provided funding so researchers with the Manta Trust could tag manta rays in the Pacific Ocean. The researchers invited Aquarium fans to help them name two of those tagged rays. Thanks to everyone who submitted names on our Facebook page. We have a winner! Find out more about the names, the winners and the program in these statements from the Aquarium’s President and CEO Nigella Hillgarth, PhD, and our friends at the Manta Trust. 


From Nigella:
We received many great entries for the manta ray naming contest and I am excited to report that the Aquarium’s Conservation team and the Manta Trust have chosen the winners.

The two manta rays, satellite tagged by the Manta Trust and with support from the Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund will be named Sylvia and Eugenie for world-renowned marine scientists Sylvia Earle, Ph.D., and Eugenie Clark, Ph.D. Congratulations to the winner, Christine Archer, and thanks to all for your submissions!

The Aquarium is proud to have partnered with the Manta Trust in this contest, and more importantly, to have supported their work to protect mantas across the globe through our Marine Conservation Action Fund. By partnering with ocean heroes such as Josh Stewart of the Manta Trust, the Aquarium is helping to launch important conservation projects around the world, and to inspire the next generation of ocean stewards.”

Manta ray | Photo: D. Fernando, Manta Trust

From the Manta Trust:
We were ecstatic to receive so many naming suggestions from enthusiastic New England Aquarium fans, and we're happy to report that the final names for our two satellite-tagged manta rays have been selected. Sylvia Earle and Eugenie Clark are giants in the marine science and conservation fields, so it seems fitting that they should have two literal giants named after them and collecting valuable data that is directly supporting science and conservation. Thanks to the support of the Aquarium's Marine Conservation Action Fund, Sylvia and Eugenie are currently swimming around the Pacific Ocean after being tagged at Mexico's Revillagigedo Islands.

Manta ray swims with researchers. A screen grab from a moment in this underwater video.

We are excited to be partnering with the Aquarium on a number of manta conservation initiatives around the world, and are grateful for their continued support.

Learn more about this project by Manta Trust to tag rays, and more. Catch up on this recent series of posts with some terrific guest posts from the scientists:

• See what it's like to tag these gentle giants, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3
• See how visiting fish markets helps scientists study these devils in distress, Part 1 and Part 2
• Learn what it takes to build a global strategy to study and protect manta and devil rays

Discover other projects supported by the Aquarium's MCAF program, all supporting grassroots research around the world to study and protect animals and habitats of our blue planet!

• Leatherback sea turtle nest protection and relocation in Indonesia
• Tackling a growing threat to manta rays in Sri Lanka
• Measuring a reef's resilience to climate change in the Indian Ocean
• Studying the impact of flooding on Indus River dolphins in India and Pakistan
• Protecting sea turtles in Costa Rica
• Studying whale sharks in the Gulf of Mexico after the Gulf Oil Spill

This post is one of a series on projects supported by the Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF). Through MCAF, the Aquarium supports researchers, conservationists and grassroots organizations all around the world as they work to address the most challenging problems facing the ocean.  

For example, the Manta Trust has received funds from MCAF to support manta ray research around the world. Its scientists recently asked the Aquarium community to help name two recently tagged rays. Thanks to everyone who submitted names! A winner will be announced this Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014. 

This series focuses on research and conservation for manta and mobula rays around the world. Guest blogger Kerstin Forsberg of Planeta Oceano talks about attending an international meeting to discuss conservation plans for mobulid rays.

As a young biologist working on manta and devil ray conservation, I was super excited when I received an invitation from the IUCN Shark Specialist Group (SSG) to participate at the Manta and Devil Ray Global Conservation Strategy Workshop. This workshop had the aim of reviewing the global conservation status of manta and devil rays (collectively called mobulids) and developing actions required for their conservation worldwide. I had been invited thanks to our team’s work pioneering the conservation of these species’ in Peru.

In 2012, together with the Manta Trust and WildAid, we started a small research project on mobulid fisheries in Peru. Since that date, and with support from the New England Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund, our project has grown to also assess mobulid trade and meat consumption, promote legislation efforts for these species, raise awareness and promote alternate livelihoods through ecotourism. It was great to feel that by participating in this IUCN workshop, our local work would now also be of global benefit!

The next moment I knew, I was packing my bags, reports and data, and traveling for more than 25 hours from Lima, Peru, to Durban, South Africa, an enchanting city in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal. Durban is well known for its busy port and attractive beaches. However, in this case the action wouldn’t take place in the field but rather in a significant conference room:

The Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund helped support the participation of Peruvian scientist Kerstin Forsberg (standing at left in purple shirt) at the IUCN Shark Specialist Group, Manta and Devil Ray workshop in South Africa. Kerstin was one of nineteen researchers at the meeting, which also included, past MCAF grantee Daniel Fernando (in red, back row) of the Manta Trust. Photo: Alessandro Ponzo.

Once I stepped into the workshop, I came across both new and familiar faces. It was exciting to meet mobulid ‘rockstar’ scientists, like Giuseppe Notarbartolo-di-Sciara, whose research we had been a model for our work. In total, we were 19 people representing the non-profit, academia, government and intergovernmental sectors. Some of us specialized in developing conservation strategies, some of us in manta science, some of us in a bit of both.

During that first day together, we each gave a presentation on our work. It was incredible to hear about efforts in places from Indonesia to Italy, and then share our story from Peru. All the presentations were quite different, but most seemed to share the same narrative: great threats to mobulid rays worldwide. I witnessed as my audience was left eye-opened when I presented photographs of pregnant mantas being harvested in Peru, or when I showed our data on thousands of devil rays being captured for local consumption.

A manta ray leaps out of the water off the coast of Tumbes, Peru. Photo: Alex Purdy, the Manta Trust.

Over the next three days, we then had the task to define the global strategy. Initially it seemed as one hard task to accomplish, especially if you put together an inter-disciplinary and international group of professionals who all have their say. Yet somehow our workshop moderator helped us assemble the bits and pieces of the strategy, and through continuous group discussions, it remarkably started to build itself up…

Through consensus, we all defined a vision of what we wanted for devil and manta ray populations: for these to ‘flourish in resilient ocean ecosystems, harmoniously with human communities…’. To attain this dream, we’d need to achieve three goals: The first, to maintain and recover populations through management of fisheries, trade and demand. The second, to create, communicate and apply knowledge required to conserve devil and manta rays. The third, to support, educate and engage communities in mobulid conservation. We then broke up into groups, to detail specific actions needed for each of these goals.

Before long, we were developing a critical tool to steer mobulid conservation efforts worldwide. This exciting document is now expected to receive inputs from a larger scientific community, and to later be published in a vital paper or report, just as the IUCN SSG previously issued for Sawfish.

In addition to building this strategy, great thoughts came out of these roundtable discussions, such as collaborative ideas to publish scientific information together, proposals to re-evaluate IUCN Red List status for some species, and international partnerships to aid in valuable taxonomy research, among others.

All this time, while we were working on these issues, I couldn’t help but think of the mantas and devil rays in the wild… striving in the ocean or facing multiple threats. These mobulids had no clue of what our group was up to, but if our strategy was implemented and accomplished, their populations would be automatically benefitted.  Now, our challenge was to move our plans from paper to action.

Mobula rays, such as this one, are relatives of the manta rays.  Photo: Planeta Oceano

I got on the plane back to Lima with even more energy to continue our work back home. This experience would have been impossible without the immense support of the Aquarium’s Marine Action Conservation Fund, as well as Project Aware and the IUCN SSG.

I looked down into the ocean and imagined the mantas and devil rays swimming beneath us once more. And that’s when the take-home message returned: There is hope for manta rays and devil rays; we just have to put our minds, hearts and hands to action. And this way, what each of us is doing locally will sum up globally… building a collaborative and organized coalition to achieve a true conservation impact for these species.

Head shot credit – Planeta Oceano

Kerstin Forsberg is the founder and director of Planeta Oceano in Peru, winner of the World Wildlife Fund’s Internationa President’s Award, and a grantee of the Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund. Read about Kerstin's visit to the New England Aquarium here.

Kerstin gave a lecture as part of the Aquarium Lecture Series in the fall of 2013. Watch that lecture on our YouTube Channel.

This post is one of a series on projects supported by the Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF). Through MCAF, the Aquarium supports researchers, conservationists and grassroots organizations all around the world as they work to address the most challenging problems facing the ocean.  

The Manta Trust has received funds from MCAF to support manta ray research around the world. Its scientists recently asked the Aquarium community to help name two recently tagged rays. Thanks to everyone who submitted names! A winner will be announced Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014. 

In this post, guest blogger is Daniel Fernando of the Manta Trust explains his focus of research: documenting the mobulid rays landed in three Sri Lankan fishing communities. Read Part 1 of this series.


My work focuses on the fisheries surveys in Sri Lanka, and thanks to a generous grant from the Aquarium's Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF), I was able to carry out intensive field surveys at three primary landing sites. The most interesting and largest of these three survey sites is Negombo, where both manta and mobula rays (collectively called “mobulids”) are landed as bycatch from the skipjack tuna gillnet fishery.



The survey begins with a 3 a.m. wake-up, followed by an hour’s drive to the market. At this time the market is already bustling with fishermen unloading their catches, auctioneers shouting their prices and buyers scurrying around with their purchases—all of this accompanied by the smell of fresh and rotting fish. Due to the lack of refrigeration on boats and any proper preservation techniques, much of the landed fish is already spoilt. On the positive side, nothing goes to waste—all the rotten fish, along with guts and other discarded remains are dried and sold as animal fodder or cheap dried fish.

The Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund helped scientist, Daniel Fernando document the impact of the manta and mobula ray fishery by collecting data at markets, such as this one in Sri Lanka.

While ensuring that I do not get hit by a shark or ray chucked off a boat, I collect as much data as possible. I begin by logging all the mobulid species landed, their gender, maturity and collect tissue samples from vital species such as mantas. Other information such as sale prices, current demand and fishing locations is also logged since it all helps obtain a better understanding of the entire fishery. Some of this data has already helped influence international policy decisions for better control and management of the trade of manta gill plates.


But this is just one market in one country and my work is not restricted to Sri Lanka. In fact I am conducting another project, funded by the Save our Seas Foundation, to create a global mobulid identification guide. This project was initiated due to ambiguity in identifying the extremely similar looking mobula species, one of the main reasons behind their inadequate protection. One component of this guide also includes a genetic kit, for which tissue samples are required from all corners of the world. Global collaboration on such a project is an absolute necessity, and MCAF’s support of other mobulid projects, around the world is critical as it not only expands data collection but also enables projects such as mine to obtain samples from all regions of the world in order to create an international, robust genetic identification kit. This kit, once produced, will be available to researchers in the field expanding mobulid data collection, and to international trade officials working to ensure the implementation of regulatory bodies such as CITES.

I hope that this initiative, along with the long-term fishery surveys, will provide us with the data and means necessary to ensure the survivability of these vulnerable species for generations to come!

Photo: The Manta Trust

Daniel Fernando is Associate Director at the Manta Trust, a PhD student at Linnaeus University and a grantee of the Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund.

He lectured at the Aquarium during the 2013 Aquarium Lecture Series. Watch his talk on the Aquarium's YouTube channel.







Learn about other projects supported by the Aquarium's MCAF program, all supporting grassroots research around the world to study and protect animals and habitats of our blue planet!

• Leatherback sea turtle nest protection and relocation in Indonesia
• Measuring a reef's resilience to climate change in the Indian Ocean
• Studying the impact of flooding on Indus River dolphins in India and Pakistan
• Protecting sea turtles in Costa Rica
• Studying whale sharks in the Gulf of Mexico after the Gulf Oil Spill

This post is one of a series on projects supported by the Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF). Through MCAF, the Aquarium supports researchers, conservationists and grassroots organizations all around the world as they work to address the most challenging problems facing the ocean. 

In this post, guest blogger is Daniel Fernando of the Manta Trust explains how scientists are working to study and protect beautiful manta rays in the wild. The Manta Trust recently asked the Aquarium community to help name two recently tagged rays. Thanks to everyone who submitted names! A winner will be announced Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014. 




Manta and mobula rays, commonly referred to as devil rays due to their two “horns” or cephalic fins on their head, are among the largest and most charismatic fish in the ocean. The 11 mobulid species form part of the elasmobranch family and are therefore closely related to sharks, and similarly, are greatly sought after by avid scuba-divers intending to check them off their bucket-list!

Sadly, they are also highly threatened and in dire need of both national and international protection throughout their range. This is mostly due to the fact that over the past decade, well manipulated marketing coupled with the declines of more desirable fish stocks has driven an international trade for their dried gill plates – the tough cartilaginous structures that enable mobulid rays to filter plankton from the water column – resulting in the development of a target fishery for these species.

Manta and mobula rays are killed for their gill plates.

These gill plates are used in Chinese Medicine.

The dried gill plates are sold in Chinese medicine, claiming to purify blood and cure ailments such as the common cold, chicken pox and asthma, among others. There is no scientific proof to validate any of these claims and recent studies even show that gill plates might be harmful when consumed in large quantities, due to the accumulation of certain heavy metals, such as arsenic. Most consumers of this “medicine” are however not even aware that it originates from a threatened species, highlighting the need not just for controls on the trade, but also an increase in awareness among the public.

Given the extremely conservative life cycles of mobulids—due to their late maturity, low fecundity, slow growth rates and few natural predators—any form of fishery that targets these species will most certainly be unsustainable. However, in order to bring about the regulations necessary to adequately protect and manage these species, we require a great deal of information to scientifically back any claims we make. We need to know about the biology and ecology of these rays and obtain an idea of their global population sizes – which is not as easy as one might think!

There are three main areas of focus to obtain such information: 1) living populations, 2) fisheries and trade, and 3) genetics and other laboratory techniques. The study of living populations is by far the most popular and best recognized by most people, thanks to amazing underwater photographs of both manta and mobula rays from some of the most exotic locations in the world, such as the Maldives, Hawaii, Yap, and Borneo, just to name a few! These studies employ techniques such as photo-identification, which makes use of unique spot patterns, similar to fingerprints, on the undersides of manta rays when they visit well-known feeding or cleaning aggregation sites.

Manta aggregations such as these are focused around feeding or cleaning sites.

The smaller mobula rays on the other hand prove to be slightly trickier to see in the wild and this is where our second area of focus helps provide some degree of information on these evasive species. Through comprehensive fishery surveys in countries where these rays are caught as either target or bycatch species, we are able to collect large quantities of data pertaining to species demographics, sizes, age at maturity and so on. All of this data helps shed light into their mysterious lives and provides us with data required to help control the fisheries of these vulnerable species.

Finally we get to the genetics! Colleagues working tirelessly in laboratories around the world are responsible for analyzing the large number of tissue samples collected both from living populations and fisheries specimens. The analyses encompass a wide range of techniques from genetic barcoding to identify specimens down to species level, stable isotope analyses to determine their primary food sources and foraging regions, and even to determine how distinct each population of mobulid rays are and when exactly, on an evolutionary scale, they became a separate species. Genetic investigations such as these provide us with critical data that not just allows us to learn more about these animals but also help enforce international regulatory bodies such as CITES and CMS via the use of genetic identification tests in trade regulation.

Research data from living populations, fisheries and genetics is what enables us to gain a deeper understanding of these animals and create a clearer image of the threats these species face, which in turn supports and facilitates the introduction of appropriate management controls and methods to help save these species. Ultimately, the conservation of species such as mobulid rays, which are not constrained by political geographic regions, is only feasible through an international multifaceted approach using methods ranging from the implementation of marine protected areas (MPAs), the introduction of local and international management measures (such as CITES and CMS), seeking alternative livelihoods for fishermen, and educating the general public and consumers about the reality of the situation.

Photo: The Manta Trust

Daniel Fernando is Associate Director at the Manta Trust, a PhD student at Linnaeus University and a grantee of the Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund.

He lectured at the Aquarium during the 2013 Aquarium Lecture Series. Watch his talk on the Aquarium's YouTube channel.







Learn about other projects supported by the Aquarium's MCAF program, all supporting grassroots research around the world to study and protect animals and habitats of our blue planet!

• Leatherback sea turtle nest protection and relocation in Indonesia
• Measuring a reef's resilience to climate change in the Indian Ocean
• Studying the impact of flooding on Indus River dolphins in India and Pakistan
• Protecting sea turtles in Costa Rica
• Studying whale sharks in the Gulf of Mexico after the Gulf Oil Spill

This post is one of a series on projects supported by the Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF). Through MCAF, the Aquarium supports researchers, conservationists and grassroots organizations all around the world as they work to address the most challenging problems facing the ocean. This series focuses on a satellite tagging project underway by the Manta Trust. Catch up with Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.

Guest blogger Josh Stewart of the Manta Trust recently shared some information about a scientific project to study manta rays. Catch up with his posts on the Explorers Blog:

• Read a first-hand account of what it's like to tag these massive animals, and 
• Learn why these research endeavors are so important.

Now that you know all about tagging these animals and what information scientists with Manta Trust are hoping to get from these devices, indulge yourself with a moment underwater with these researchers. This video lets you swim deep below the surface among these massive animals with wingspans of up to 7 meters (that's nearly 23 feet!). Watch as the scientists slip behind the animals and plant the tag as gently as possible—with little reaction from the ray.


Tagging an Oceanic Manta from Josh Stewart on Vimeo.

And now that you're thoroughly enthralled by these animals, we hope you'll head over to our manta Facebook post and submit a name for two of these beauties! The rays we're naming are both females. The Aquarium's Conservation Department will consider all the names posted on our manta Facebook posts between today and Tuesday, September 9. Get creative. Think about names that might be educational, or touch on conservation issues, or their beauty. The winners will be announced on September 16, and they'll get a beautiful plush animal from our Gift Shop to remind them of their special connection to "their ray" soaring through the Pacific Ocean. Good luck, we can't wait to see what you come up with.

Learn about other projects supported by the Aquarium's MCAF program, all supporting grassroots research around the world to study and protect animals and habitats of our blue planet!

• Leatherback sea turtle nest protection and relocation in Indonesia
• Tackling a growing threat to manta rays in Sri Lanka
• Measuring a reef's resilience to climate change in the Indian Ocean
• Studying the impact of flooding on Indus River dolphins in India and Pakistan
• Protecting sea turtles in Costa Rica
• Studying whale sharks in the Gulf of Mexico after the Gulf Oil Spill

This post is one of a series on projects supported by the Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF). Through MCAF, the Aquarium supports researchers, conservationists and grassroots organizations all around the world as they work to address the most challenging problems facing the ocean.  

Part 1 of this series focused on how scientists tag these giants. Here's more about the scientific tagging project from guest blogger Josh Stewart of the Manta Trust. 

The Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund helped support the satellite tagging of manta rays off the coast of Mexico, led by Josh Stewart of the Manta Trust.

Understanding how these gentle giants move around in and use their environment is a pressing and unanswered question. Manta rays are threatened globally by targeted fisheries and bycatch, much of which is driven by the gill plate trade (read more here). Currently we know almost nothing about the population structure and connectivity of oceanic manta populations, which have significant implications for the impacts that fisheries are having on mantas, as well as the practicalities of effective conservation and management action. Luckily, mantas are protected from direct catch under Mexican law, but they are still impacted by harmful fisheries interactions and bycatch in Mexican waters.

Tagging oceanic manta rays

We know of two manta hotspots in Pacific Mexico: the Revillagigedo Archipelago, long a favorite of dive tourists, and Bahia de Banderas, where we've recently discovered what seems to be a sizeable manta population. One of our goals is to determine whether these two 'hotspots' are part of a single, linked population that migrates seasonally between the two regions, or if they represent separate populations. Evidence of fisheries interactions, such as gear entanglement, scars from fishing lines, and missing cephalic and pectoral fins, is more frequent in mantas observed at the coastal hotspot in Bahia de Banderas, suggesting that mantas using this area may be more susceptible to bycatch or other negative impacts of fisheries.

Understanding the linkage between these regions, as well as the habitats that the mantas here are using and visiting frequently, will help us generate strategies for reducing and mitigating these impacts. Furthermore, the tag tracks will show us how large the geographic ranges of these populations are and, importantly, whether they are staying within Mexican waters or traveling to regions where mantas are not protected.

While we'll be biting our nails until the tags pop off and transmit their data in November, the New England Aquarium is taking the opportunity to properly prepare for the satellite tracks by naming the two mantas that are currently sporting some new MCAF-funded fashion accessories. Stay tuned for details on how you can suggest names for these mantas and vote on your favorites! We'll keep you updated on where the mantas went and what this means for manta conservation come this fall.

Josh Stewart is the Associate Director of the Manta Trust, a PhD student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and a grantee of the Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund.

This post is one of a series on projects supported by the Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF). Through MCAF, the Aquarium supports researchers, conservationists and grassroots organizations all around the world as they work to address the most challenging problems facing the ocean.  

Between September 5 and September 9, we are hosting a naming contest for two female mantas tagged in this post. All names submitted on our manta Facebook posts will be considered. Here's more about the scientific tagging project from guest blogger Josh Stewart of the Manta Trust. 

The Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund helped support the satellite tagging of manta rays off the coast of Mexico, led by Josh Stewart of the Manta Trust.

Tagging a manta is not a particularly easy task. Setting aside the technical details of the tags themselves, the days (and days and days) of travel required to reach study sites, and the hours spent in the water each day, when the mantas actually arrive, the challenge of tagging truly begins.

Oceanic manta rays, our species of interest, can reach up to 7 meters in disc width, or wingspan, and weigh several tons. When you get this big, not many creatures are able to eat you. And so manta rays have effectively lost all of their active defenses (think spines or barbs in their benthic relatives, stingrays), and now rely solely on their immense size and perhaps surprising agility to keep predators at bay. As a result, mantas have few natural predators—mostly large sharks—and the only instances we know of fatal predation are when orcas have stumbled on an unlucky and apparently tasty-looking manta. Orcas aside, sharks tend to take chunks out of the pectoral fins of mantas, and always appear to attack from behind, based on bite marks and scarring patterns observed in mantas around the world.

Manta rays (Manta alfredi) are thought to have the biggest brains of all the fish in the ocean | File photo: Guy Stevens

So it's safe to say that mantas sometimes get a bit nervous when something approaches them quickly from behind. Funny, then, that this is exactly where we need to be when we tag a manta. So how do we do it, without our study subject taking off at high speed the minute we approach? Patience, mainly, and gaining the trust of a two-ton giant 60 feet below the surface of the ocean.

As I jump into the cool, crystal-clear blue off San Benedicto Island in the Revillagigedo Archipelago, Mexico, a watery abyss opens up beneath me. Despite 100-foot visibility, the bottom is nowhere to be seen, while the cathedral-sized pillar known as The Boiler rises from the deep to my right. The Boiler is an attraction in itself, a dramatic volcanic pinnacle alone in the blue. But the main event here is the abundance of mantas, making The Boiler perhaps the best site in the entire archipelago to see them.

Five minutes after dropping in, our first manta appears: a 5-meter female with a gnarled, short tail and the scars of an oceanic giant that has been around the block a few times. She approaches the divers cautiously but with clear interest. This is one of the most fascinating aspects of being in the water with a manta: the unmistakable curiosity in their eyes, the obvious desire and willingness to interact with bubbling visitors. As she loops above their heads, coming close enough to touch and inquisitively looking each and every one of them over, a second manta appears out of the blue. This one is a black manta, the same species as the first but with almost no white markings on its entire body; the stealth bombers of the deep. Soon two more giants have joined in, and we're surrounded by curious mantas that one can't help but feel are playing with us, enjoying our company.

Now comes the hard part. I pick two mantas that I want to tag: the big female that arrived first and a male that joined in later on. I make my way toward the female, who is now swimming in wide circles out into the blue and back toward The Boiler. I swim to where I think she'll intercept me, and wait for her to approach; she passes over my head and swims through my bubbles, apparently enjoying the way they must tickle her belly.

She starts to swim off but I don't chase her, I let her turn back around and come to me, making tighter and tighter circles until she's passing by me every 30 seconds or so. On her fifth or sixth pass I try swimming after her slowly, positioning myself above and behind. She seems fine with it, but I stop kicking and let her make another loop. On the next pass I do the same again, this time sticking with her a little longer. She seems to be getting comfortable with me swimming behind her, but I don't push my luck.

One more pass and it's time; I "load" my tagging pole, extending the thick rubber band and grabbing the top of the spear close to the tag. As she passes by me, I slowly swim behind her, but I'm still too far to apply the tag: I want the tag to be about a foot above her pectoral fin when I release it and now I'm about 4 feet away. I kick harder and pick up speed, holding my breath and hoping she doesn't spook: 3 feet… 2 feet… She's still very calm: 1 foot now… I aim my spear at the sweet spot and release, and the tag glides seamlessly into position. The manta barely flinches, and doesn't swim off despite having just been tagged. My colleague, Antonio Ruiz, a researcher and recent graduate of the University of Baja California Sur, follows and collects a tissue biopsy from her; still hardly a flinch.
(Watch a video of a manta ray being tagged here.)

A few minutes later I deploy the second tag on the male in much the same fashion. I'm often asked whether the tagging process hurts the mantas. Based on the reaction this time, it seems clear that they aren't too bothered by being tagged, but in other cases mantas that I've tagged have reacted by swimming off at top speed, so it does seem to vary by individual and by region. Now while I'm not a manta and I must admit I've never personally been tagged, I can say with some confidence that mantas do not feel pain in the same way that humans do, and being tagged would not "hurt" in the same way for a manta as it would for a human.

Humans have evolved complex nerve networks that serve as learning tools: the nerves in your fingers tell you not to touch a hot kettle because it will burn you, for example. Mantas haven't evolved in an environment with the same need for these 'pain' cues, and therefore they have much lower densities of nerve endings. Furthermore, while about 50% of human nerve endings are devoted to feeling pain, less than 1% of nerve endings in rays serve this purpose. The difference between tagging a manta and tagging a human is probably similar to the difference between pinching the skin on your elbow and pinching the skin on your triceps. So in cases where mantas react strongly to being tagged it's probably a result of being surprised, and in my experience this tends to happen more in regions where mantas are not as accustomed to divers.

Soon after the second tag is deployed we end our dive and head back to the boat. We do three more dives at the boiler, and on each dive we see the same two mantas that were tagged in the morning. Over the course of about eight hours, until the sun begins to set and we end our day's diving, the mantas continue to follow us around, swim over our heads, look us in the eye and practically touch us with the tips of the fins, as if wanting to see what these strange, bubbly creatures feel like. We tag two more mantas—both females—before the day is through, and just before surfacing on our last dive I look down and see a train of mantas below us, almost every one of them sporting a new tag. These tags, generously supported in part by the Aquarium's Marine Conservation Action Fund, will collect data on movements and diving behavior for the next six months, at which time they'll pop off and transmit their precious, archived data back to us via satellite.

Josh Stewart is the Associate Director of the Manta Trust, a PhD student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and a grantee of the Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund.