When photographer Kristian Laine went out to the Great Barrier Reef near Lady Elliot Island to photograph some turtles, manta rays, and sharks, he wasn't expecting to stumble across the only known pink manta ray in the world.

"I had never even heard of a pink manta and when I first saw it, I thought my camera was playing up," he told ScienceAlert.

"Only later that night I saw a photo of a pink manta on the restaurant's notice board and thought it was a joke until I rushed to check the belly patterns in my camera."

The pink reef manta ray (Mobula alfredi) was first spotted in 2015, where diver Ryan Jeffery took some photos of the pink-tinged beauty while on a dive.

The mature male caused a stir at the time, and was named Inspector Clouseau after the bumbling inspector from the Pink Panther.

The Inspector is around 3.3 metres (11 feet), and has been elusive in the five years since it was first noticed.

Although locals are now well aware of him, the pink manta has only been seen around 10 times. Despite how shy he is, scientists from the research group Project Manta are still on the case investigating what causes the vibrant pink colour; they took a small biopsy in 2016 to try to discover more.


"There has not been a thorough investigation into diet or stable isotope analysis, but given the stability of the white 'birthmark' and pink colour over time we think diet can be ruled out," explains ecologist Asia Haines from Project Manta.

"The working theory is that it is just a different and very unique expression of the melanin, but that is still to be confirmed."


But Laine is just glad he got to experience such a rare sight.

"Overall it was very calm and just let me be there," he said.

"Later when I realised what I had witnessed I was stoked - I just couldn't believe how rare a moment I had experienced."
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'That manta absolutely understood what was going on. Jake went down again and again and she just remained still for him'

A giant manta ray has been filmed appearing to beg a professional diver for help saving her life.

The three-metre-wide sea creature is shown swimming up to snorkelling guide Jake Wilton and flipping over in the water – apparently to show him fish hooks embedded in her right eye.

The footage, caught near Ningaloo Reef off Western Australia’s north west coast, seems to show the manta ray then staying perfectly still as Mr Wilton gently removes the potentially deadly spikes.

The animal – well known to locals and affectionately nicknamed Freckles – then swims away with a flourish as the diver emerges triumphantly with the hooks.

Monty Halls, a British marine biologist aboard the boat at the time, said: “That manta absolutely understood what was going on. Jake went down again and again and she just remained still for him.”


The footage was released on Thursday by Ningaloo Marine Interactions, the tour company which Mr Wilton works for.

The hero himself suggested it was all in a day’s work.

“I’m often guiding snorkellers in the area and it’s as if she recognised me and was trusting me to help her,” he said.


“She got closer and closer and then started unfurling to present the eye to me. I knew we had to get the hooks out or she would have been in big trouble. I went for a few dives down to see how she’d react to me being close to her.”

When the animal stayed calm, he approached and took out the hooks.


"The manta stayed completely still in the water,” he said.

“It’s pretty incredible behaviour if this is what happened,” said David Boyle, lecturer in marine biology at the University of Plymouth. “It’s not uncommon for animals – generally mammals – to interact with divers but for one in distress to seek out assistance would be novel indeed.”


Manta rays are believed to be some of the most intelligent creatures in the ocean. Unlike stingrays, they don’t have an external spike and are generally harmless to humans.
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In the old fishing harbor of Vueltas located on La Gomera, an island in the Canary Islands, sting rays, eagle rays and Butterfly rays regularly come to visit the port.

 Over the centuries, fishermen in the harbor have thrown their bycatch into the port by the landing stairs, which has lead to the rays foraging there. In this video, a boy named Joel, befriends a very large sting ray who swims right up to the stairs and lets him pet him, while getting a snack!

La Gomera is one of Spain's Canary Islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa. In area, it is the second-smallest of the seven main islands of this group. It belongs to the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Its capital is San Sebastián de La Gomera, where the headquarters of the Cabildo are located.


In 2011, mantas became strictly protected in international waters because of their inclusion in the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals.

Divers off the coast of Central America have filmed the extraordinary moment a manta ray appeared to 'ask for help' in removing a piece of fishing net stuck to its body.

Brazilian Thomaz Monteiro, 25, and Canadian Brian Thompson were swimming around Bat Island off the coast of Costa Rica when the manta glided towards them.

"There are no words to describe this feeling," Mr Monteiro told ninemsn.

But it was Prof Thompson who performed the precarious task of unhooking the net from the belly of the large ocean animal.

After it is finally unhooked from the net, the manta ray glides towards the sunlight and stays close to the divers for about 30 minutes.


"All the divers felt a deep connection with this amazing animal," Mr Monteiro said.

He said the fishing net was narrow but ended up leaving small wounds in the animal's left side.

Mr Monteiro, who told ninemsn he has been diving since he was 12, decided to post the video in an effort to combat the illegal fishing on Costa Rica.
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“They’re such an iconic species, beloved by divers,” said Andrea Marshall, director of the Marine Megafauna Foundation, who came up with the description during an interview with NBC News. “They’re just amazing.”

Unlikely as it might seem, the panda and the manta ray have a lot in common.

Just as scientists still haven’t been able to confirm the number of pandas in the wild, they also have no idea how many manta rays exist.

“Globally we don’t know how many manta rays there are,” said Guy Stevens, director of the U.K.-based Manta Trust, whose research is largely based around manta populations in the Maldives.

But -- again, like the panda -- scientists think it’s a small population.

“If they’re lucky, (manta rays) have two pups (over several years). That’s a very low reproductive rate, especially compared to your average fish,” said Dr. Heidi Dewar, a biologist at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, part of NOAA.

Anecdotal evidence suggests mantas are under threat, and China may be a major reason for it.

Manta rays are vulnerable on two fronts: as bycatch — getting caught in industrial fishing nets targeting different types of tuna — and, increasingly, because of traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM.


Manta rays are harvested for their gill rakers, which allow the fish to filter food from water. Some Chinese believe they have healing properties or are good at cleaning out toxins. One Chinese-language website claims gill rakers enhance the immune system, promote blood circulation and aid in the treatment of cancer, skin disease and infertility.

“It’s just cartilage,” said Dewar, echoing skepticism expressed by many scientists.

Medicinal fad?

Conservationists say manta rays aren’t even considered “traditional” medicine and argue no reference to the animal can be found in TCM books dating back a century. But with rising incomes that enable Chinese consumers to readily adopt medicinal fads, the impact on manta rays has accelerated over the past 10 to 15 years.


“A lot of it is completely unrecorded,” said Stevens, who worked on a project founded by Shark Savers and WildAid to document the scope of gill-raker harvesting.

Researchers looked at the location, value and species involved. “It does seem the majority of all of those gills that are being traded are ending up in China,” Stevens said.

The conclusion, published in a report called Manta Ray of Hope, found that roughly 3,400 manta rays and 94,000 mobulas (related to the manta ray family) are caught each year, but the numbers reflect only reported catches. “Unreported and subsistence fisheries will mean true landings are much higher,” the report said.

Visits to random TCM shops in Beijing and Shanghai turned up no gill rakers. In fact, a veteran pharmacist at Tongrentang, a long-established purveyor of traditional Chinese and herbal medicines, said she had never heard of manta rays being used this way.


But the Manta Ray of Hope report estimates a mature ocean manta could yield up to 15 pounds of dried gills that can bring in as much as $230 a pound in a market in China.

Marshall said she has noticed an uptick in manta fishing. “I’ve been (in Mozambique) in the last decade … and we’ve seen an 87 percent decline in the population because of the fishing.”

Unlike many shippers, Chinese merchants who transport cheap products from the mainland for export to Africa “want to fill [their unloaded cargo vessels] with resources wherever they go. In Africa, they fill it up with wood, fish or shark’s fin,” she said. “They’ll go out to the local fisheries along the coastline and scout for these products.”

The scientist has spoken to members of local communities, who say the Chinese offer “new nets, new lines, new hooks. (The Chinese traders) say to them, ‘If you get the sharks or the mantas or the turtles, you get all the meat. You can keep all the meat. You just sell us the things you don’t normally eat.'”


Protecting a ‘threatened’ species 

Mantas were listed last year as “threatened” under the international Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has classified the manta ray as “vulnerable” to extinction.

Chinese scientists have also weighed in.

“In the last two years, we have conducted evaluations of the manta ray and submitted a recommendation to the government to list it as a protected species,” said Professor Wang Yanmin from Shandong University’s Marine College.

“There is no regulation for protecting the manta ray so sales of mantas are not illegal,” said Feng Yongfeng, founder of Green Beagle, a group that promotes environmental protection.

Groups like Manta Trust are focusing on getting manta rays listed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). But scientists have their work cut out for them.


“It’s very difficult to get listed on CITES. They ask for a lot of detail that is difficult to pin down,” said Marshall. “Maybe in the terrestrial world, biologists can provide those kinds of details. When you’re talking about the megafauna [or large marine species] world, it’s very difficult.”

Marshall – who discovered a second type of manta ray in 2008 and is in the process of identifying a third -- acknowledges little is known about them.

Manta births a mystery 

Vexing questions include the manta’s life span, details of their reproductive ecology and migratory patterns.

“I could wrap my life up in 20 minutes if I could talk to them,” she joked. “It has been driving me insane for the last ten years because I haven’t been able to figure out where they give birth. It’s 2012 and nobody has ever seen a manta give birth in the wild.”

And research is painstaking. For one, concentrations of the animal tend to be around far-flung islands. Stevens of Manta Trust cited the costs of tracking mantas and the difficulty in locating and knowing how to study them.


With technological improvements, however, scientists are gaining some ground. Satellite tags are one way to help the research. “What do they do when we can’t observe them? I’d love to follow an animal to find out how they spend their time,” said Stevens. “The tagging gives you small glimpses of them.”

Two dive instructors at the Misool Eco Resort and Conservation Center in Raja Ampat have uncovered a revenue stream to offset research costs: tourism.

“One manta ray can raise $1 million (U.S. dollars) in tourism income over its lifetime,” said Rebecca Pilkington-Vincett, citing a figure contained in the Manta Ray of Hope report.

With the blessing of the resort, Pilkington-Vincett and Calvin Beale launched a research project off the surrounding reefs.

Last season, the duo raised $32,000 from donations by recreational divers who accompanied them on dives to gather DNA samples and tag the mantas.

With the money, they have bought three satellite tags and collected numerous DNA samples. They are sending off the data to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for analysis by a graduate student.

With online databases such as the Manta Research Project, where some of Pilkington-Vincett and Beale’s data are logged, or the Manta Matcher, developed by Marshall and operating much “like the FBI fingerprint online database,” research on the manta ray has become rooted in a global exchange among scientists and amateurs alike.

Until its secrets are fully revealed, the manta’s mystique seems guaranteed.

“I think it’s fascinating,” said Dewar of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, “that there is such a large and amazing creature that has so many mysteries attached to it.”

Additional research by Le Li, Johanna Armstrong and Yanzhou Liu.
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