The 47th of my 40 donations goes to the Manta Trust.
The Manta Trust’s mission is to conserve mobulid rays, their relatives, and their habitats, through a combination of research, education and collaboration.
The Manta Trust’s goal is a sustainable future for the oceans, where manta rays and their relatives thrive in healthy, diverse marine ecosystems.
To realise their goal, for the next five years the Manta Trust frames its activities and efforts around a core objective:
“To see all species of manta rays and their relatives protected or effectively managed for sustainable / non-consumptive use by the people closest to them, in a means that promotes wider ocean conservation.”
Their strategy for achieving this objective is known as the Global Mobulid Conservation Programme.
I travelled to the Maldives recently for some much needed R&R and took the opportunity to fulfil a life-long ambition to dive with a Manta Ray.
I was blown away to find myself freediving amongst a squadron of over 100 Manta Rays feeding in Hanifaru Bay:
As I was enjoying the spectacle, I noticed some fairly well kitted out freedivers in the water which was intriguing but I was too focussed on the Mantas to pay too much attention at the time. However, I kept seeing a group of people with oceanic survey equipment, cameras and one of the group had a shark tattoo and a PADI face mask so I finally introduced myself to one of them in the airport at Mali.
That particular individual was Henthorne the co-founder and Director of One Blue Ocean. He explained that the others were all from the Manta Trust and they were working together and indeed were the same people that I saw freediving, taking pictures and doing research amongst the Manta Rays whilst I was in Hanifaru Bay!
I then introduced myself to the rest of the group, commended them on the work they are doing and took some contact details.
I hope to be able to get in touch and share my videos with them, I hope they will appreciate them and they may even see themselves freediving with the Mantas!
Having been on well organised trips to see the Mantas and do some Scuba around Baa Atoll, I decided to simply snorkel from the beach where we were staying on Dharavandhoo Island and had an incredible experience with Eagle Rays, a Turtle, a Shark, a Barracuda and to top it off a lone Manta Ray!
I noticed the Manta above me heading east quite quickly in much shallower water but upon seeing me, instead of fleeing or just carrying on, it turned to see what I was and in doing so circled me before swimming off east again. This felt like a really personal interaction and one that I will treasure for the rest of my life:
Thanks to the lone Manta flashing his underside when he circled me as I freedived off @kihabeachmaldives the clever conservationists @mantatrust were able to identify him as ‘Mr. PADI who is one of the more common male mantas we see in Baa Atoll, his ID image is below’:
What an amazing experience and conclusion – I reckon he did it on purpose, the show off! 😂
You can submit pictures of Manta Rays for identification purposes to:
www.mantatrust.org/IDtheManta
info@mantatrust.org
http://www.mantatrust.org/
So it is with great pleasure that I can make a donation to this great organisation, it was a pleasure meeting and dealing with them; respect to the work they do!
