WEBVTT
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Language: en

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(Claire Fackler speaking) Alright, well we're very pleased

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to have all of you joining here in our National Marine

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Sanctuaries Webinar Series. This is a series that's

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actually hosted by the NOAA Office of National Marine

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Sanctuaries, and what we're really trying to do is provide

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relevant information about our education and outreach

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offerings to you as formal and informal educators,

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as well as curriculum materials and, in this case,

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science topics of exciting, charismatic species like

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manta rays. So, we're trying to help you bring the ocean

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into your classroom or into your facility through our

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webinar series. With that, I want to introduce you to our

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National Marine Sanctuary System.

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Here at NOAA, we are the trustees of a system of

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thirteen National Marine Sanctuaries and two

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Marine National Monuments. It currently encompasses

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over 600,000 square nautical miles of special ocean

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areas. If you look at the map, you can see we've got a

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couple in the Pacific Islands region: Hawaiin Islands

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Humpback Whale Sanctuary, the

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Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument,

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Rose Atoll Marine National Monument, which is

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encompassed in our American Samoa, four in the state

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of California, Pacific Northwest, working all the way

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around the coast to the Florida Keys, off of Boston,

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Massachusetts, Stellwagen Bank, and off of Georgia,

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Gray's Reef. So we've got this great area of special

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marine protected areas that are set aside, and these are

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set aside because they are nationally significant areas.

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And so oftentimes, it's Congress that is designating

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these special areas, or through an executive order of the

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president. And they're set aside because of their

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aesthetic value or the conservation value of the area.

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In some cases, it's historical or cultural value.

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And we like to say that these National Marine

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Sanctuaries really are our living classrooms. This is

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where people can see, touch, and learn about these

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underwater treasures that are part of the United States.

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Like underwater parks, or like national parks, but found

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under water. So, with that I'd like to introduce you first to

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myself. I'm Claire Fackler, I am education liaison for the

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National Marine Sanctuary System, and I'm sitting in

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Santa Barbara, California today, and will be facilitating

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today's webinar. We do have a special guest,

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Joshua Stewart. He is one of our Dr. Nancy Foster

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Scholars, and he, let me get a little bit of background on

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him, he'll be giving his presentation today: "Manta Rays:

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Studying an Ocean Icon." He's currently pursuing a PhD

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at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. His PhD will be

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in Marine Biology. He's studying spatial ecology and

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population connectivity of oceanic manta rays.

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He actually received his bachelor's degree in marine

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biology from Indiana University, and after completing an

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undergraduate degree he was a Rolex Scholar for a year.

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And he's now currently a Dr. Nancy Foster Scholar.

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Before I turn it over to him to share his slides, I wanted

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to let you know that during the presentation, all

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attendees will be in listen-only mode; if you have any

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questions or you're having technical difficulties, I

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recommend you type something into the question box,

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and throughout the presentation, I'll check there and

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try to either answer a question or help you with your

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technical issue. And we are recording this session

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today. We'll be sharing the recording with all registered

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participants, and it will also be available to the public

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on our sanctuaries.noaa.gov website. At the end of our

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presentation, there will be a slide that shows the archive

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URL, a little bit on the longer side, but that will be

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available. So, with that I'm going to hand control over to

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Josh Stewart for our presentation. So, Josh, coming

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your way.

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- (Joshua Stewart speaking) Alright, cool. Thank you,

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Claire. Thanks for the intro, and thanks everybody who's

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on the webinar for coming today and sharing a few

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hours of your afternoon with us. So, Claire gave you a

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little bit of background about what I'm gonna be talking

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about. I'm gonna give you a lot of information about

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mantas, but I didn't want to do it just as like a lecture

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format because I think that's boring both for me and for

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you guys. So, instead I'm gonna try and give you this

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information sort of through the lens of the work that I've

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been doing with manta rays, why I find them so

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fascinating, and then bringing it back around at the end

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to how the National Marine Sanctuary System impacts

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manta rays in US waters and elsewhere.

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And along the way, we're also gonna have some

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cool interactive questions, which Claire helped set up.

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And the first one is gonna come right now, and the

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question is how many of you guys have actually seen a

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manta ray? So, we'll give you, I don't know, thirty

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seconds, a minute, something like that, to answer this.

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It could be in an aquarium, could be in the wild scuba

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diving. But yeah, I kind of want to get the sense of who's

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seen a manta, who am I talking to here?

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-(Claire Fackler speaking) Alright, well we've got seventy

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percent of our participants that have voted. Oh, good,

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they're coming in. Once we hit about ninety percent,

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which is just a second or two away, then I'll go ahead

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and close the poll. Alright, those of you that are just

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joining, go ahead and let us know if you've seen a

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manta ray. It could be in the ocean, in an aquarium.

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Okay, I'll go ahead and close the poll.

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And sharing the results right now.

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Are you able to see them, Josh?

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- (Joshua Stewart speaking) Alright, yeah.

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Seventy percent of you guys have seen a manta,

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that is great. I wish I'd asked if it was in an aquarium

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or in the ocean, but hopefully some of you guys or most

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of you have actually seen these in the wild.

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And this photo that I'm showing right now, this is one of

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my favorite photos of a manta ray. Even though we

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actually discourage people from approaching this close

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or touching them, I think that this really sort of captures

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what people love about mantas. And hopefully some of

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your experiences with these animals have been similar.

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So, one of the coolest things about these guys, and I

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think what maybe people love the most, is how big they

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are. So, the biggest mantas get to around six meters, or

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about twenty feet in wing span, or we call it disc width.

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And then there are even some records of bigger guys up

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around seven meters or so. So, those are huge animals.

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And with those big body sizes also come big brains, and

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so they've got the largest brain-to-body mass ratio of

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any fish, or sorry the largest brain of any fish, and one of

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the largest brain-to-body mass ratios.

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And so we typically use brain-to-body mass ratio

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as an indicator of how smart an animal might be, how

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intelligent they are. And that, combined with the

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behaviors that we often see in manta rays, the sort of

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really curious, gregarious attitude, leads us to believe

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that they're actually quite smart animals.

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And for those of you who have been in the water with

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these guys, you probably have experienced that with

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mantas swimming up to you, maybe looking you in the

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eye. I always feel like I'm actually having a little bit of a

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true personal interaction with these animals when I

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see them in the water, as opposed to a big fish that just

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kind of swims by and checks you out. So I think that's

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why mantas have been so popular throughout sort of

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diving history. Back in the seventies, people used to love

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to hitch a ride on these guys, which also sort of

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emphasizes how gentle they are. And so I can't really

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think of another animal that is this big that's a wild

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animal that you can approach and have these kinds of

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interactions with. So, you know, if we think of big sharks,

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great white sharks, if you're smart you're typically hiding

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in a cage to try and view them. And even big herbivores

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like elephants, you know we have to look at those guys

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from a safari vehicle, we have to keep our distance.

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And so I think mantas are pretty unique in that sense,

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in that sort of both the interaction and our ability to

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really get close with them, and experience that

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interaction. Oops, did I lose the, nope here we go.

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So, I'm gonna start by sort of telling you how I got

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involved with mantas, my experience working with them,

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and then we're gonna dig into some of the fun stuff,

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some of the research that I've been doing more recently.

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So, I saw my first manta many years ago, maybe fifteen

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years ago. But I didn't get to start working with them

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until about seven years ago, in the Maldives. And so

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you're looking at a picture of a young, impressionable

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Josh jumping in with a group of reef manta rays, and I

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got to work on a project in the Maldives for about a

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month, which at the time, back in 2010, was one of the

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only active manta ray research programs in the world.

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And so we were looking at the feeding behavior of these

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mantas. They would form these huge aggregations

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of up to two-hundred or two-hundred and fifty maximum

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at a time, and they'd make these giant cyclones, where

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they'd all get together at this small bay and feed

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together. So, here's a photo of me for scale. And it

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was this sort of mind-boggling experience that really

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got me hooked on the animals themselves, both

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because of those interactions and the sort of

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charisma of the animals, if you will. But one of the

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things that was most interesting to me at the time is

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really how little we actually knew about these animals

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and how few people were actively working on them.

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So, this is an animal that's, like we talked about, been

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hugely popular with the public, with the dive industry

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for years and years, and yet it seemed like every time I

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asked a question about them, really basic stuff, the

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answer was, "Well, we actually don't know that."

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And so that was really cool for me, very exciting.

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And that's sort of what lead me to pursue this track a

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little more, working with mantas, pursuing graduate

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school, and going on to found a non-profit with my

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colleague Guy Stevens, whom I was working with at the

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time in the Maldinves, and we've now grown into sort of

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a large, international non-profit whose focus is entirely

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on manta rays and their relatives. So I'm gonna start by

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telling you about what we did know at the time and what

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we didn't know at the time about mantas and then talk

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about some of the research gaps that I was interested

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in and how we've gone about filling those knowledge

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gaps. So, this slide used to be really easy for me.

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Manta rays are the ones we're going to be talking about

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most today, but they have these really close relatives

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called mobula rays, which are smaller manta rays,

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basically. They're really closely related, they look really

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similar, people confuse mantas and mobulas quite

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often. So, I used to be able to throw this slide up and

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say there are a couple of species of manta rays, there

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are the oceanic mantas, which I'm also going to focus

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a little more on today, and then the reef manta rays,

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which is in the bottom right. I don't know if you can see

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my cursor here. And those are the ones I was working

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with in the Maldives and which we just saw the videos

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of. And then there are quite a few species of these

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smaller mobula rays. But actually, right now, I can't tell

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you exactly how many there are because this entire

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family is in the midst of a taxonomic revision.

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So there might be as

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few as six species of mobula rays, maybe seven. We

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think there's another species of manta in the

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Caribbean, although it could just be a sub-species. So,

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hopefully in a year or two, we'll be able to give you a

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much clearer picture of what the structure of this family

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actually is. But in the meantime, we're just gonna focus

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mainly on mantas and emphasize that there are mantas,

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and there are mobulas. So, the mantas are the giants

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of this group. So, the oceanic mantas, like the one on

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the top left here, these guys can reach six or seven

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meters. The slightly smaller reef mantas, they get up

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to around four meters, sometimes a little bigger than

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that. Then everything else that you're seeing here, like

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mobula tarapacana on the top right, and these smaller

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guys, these are all the mobulas. So, they're actually

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morphologically really similar. The way that they vary

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most is in size. And so you'll see down on the bottom

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here some of these smaller mobulas, people often

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think that these are baby manta rays. So, you know,

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people say, "Oh, I saw this tiny manta ray, I think

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it was probably a newborn." But in fact, they're

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probably these little mobulas, although given the

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similarities, you could be forgiven for not knowing the

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difference in thinking that these guys are just baby

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mantas. But they are different. We actually know even

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less about the mobulas, so right now we're actually

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trying to initiate more and more research so we can

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learn more of these sort of basic questions about the

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mobulas, but in the last five or six years, we've made a

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lot of progress with the mantas, which is what I'm

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gonna talk about today. So, mantas and mobulas

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are distributed pretty much around the world, as long as

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you stay in pretty warm waters. So, they're very

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abundant in the tropics, you get them a little bit further

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north and south in the sub-tropical and maybe just into

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temperate waters, so here in San Diego we really rarely

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see them. We've seen a few during the El Nino phases

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where you get those really warm water events, and

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they're able to push a little further north.

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And they make it south down past the equator into

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a little bit cooler water, as well. But pretty much, these

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guys are found in tropical waters around the world.

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The mantas, the oceanic mantas in particular, are

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pretty much found everywhere, and a few of the mobula

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species are also found all over the place.

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And then there are a couple of species that are unique

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to different ocean basins. Like we have some that only

00:14:14.460 --> 00:14:17.640
exist in the Atlantic, some that only exist in the Pacific

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and the Indian Ocean, and so on.

00:14:22.080 --> 00:14:25.440
One of the really neat things about mantas is how long

00:14:25.440 --> 00:14:29.640
they live. So, what you're looking at here is a photo of

00:14:29.640 --> 00:14:32.840
the same manta ray, this is a reef manta, that was

00:14:32.840 --> 00:14:36.660
taken twenty-three years apart, and we have records of

00:14:36.660 --> 00:14:39.220
mantas that were photographed like this, the same

00:14:39.220 --> 00:14:42.940
animal, up to thirty or thirty-five years apart, and at that

00:14:42.940 --> 00:14:45.560
point, they were already sexually mature, so we know

00:14:45.560 --> 00:14:48.600
that there's animals that are at least forty or so years

00:14:48.600 --> 00:14:52.120
old, and we think that they can probably live to forty-five,

00:14:52.120 --> 00:14:55.520
fifty, sixty years old, maybe even longer.

00:14:55.520 --> 00:14:58.340
So, we know a minimum lifespan but we actually don't

00:14:58.340 --> 00:15:02.080
know the maximum lifespan, so we don't know how old

00:15:02.080 --> 00:15:05.540
these guys can get to. And the way that we can track

00:15:05.540 --> 00:15:08.560
animals like that and see how long they live for is by

00:15:08.560 --> 00:15:11.160
taking photos of these unique spot patterns that they

00:15:11.160 --> 00:15:14.320
have on their bellies. So, we think of those as sort of a

00:15:14.320 --> 00:15:18.260
fingerprint, because every animal, every manta has its

00:15:18.260 --> 00:15:21.920
own unique set of spots, and it seems like, based on

00:15:21.920 --> 00:15:25.460
observations both in the wild and in aquariums, that

00:15:25.460 --> 00:15:28.580
those spots remain consistent throughout their lifetime.

00:15:28.580 --> 00:15:30.940
So we can fingerprint these animals, we can

00:15:30.940 --> 00:15:34.260
actually get contributions from dive tourists, from

00:15:34.260 --> 00:15:38.160
citizen scientists like yourselves, who might be out

00:15:38.160 --> 00:15:41.420
diving and snap a photo of these animals. And then you

00:15:41.420 --> 00:15:44.820
can upload those to our website, and we'll log those

00:15:44.820 --> 00:15:47.820
records of those animals. And so that allows us to track

00:15:47.820 --> 00:15:51.220
them both in space, so if one person takes a photo of

00:15:51.220 --> 00:15:54.140
this manta over on this side of an island, and another

00:15:54.140 --> 00:15:57.380
takes a photo of the same manta on a nearby island,

00:15:57.380 --> 00:16:00.300
we can track movements that way, and we can also

00:16:00.300 --> 00:16:02.880
keep track of animals through time. So, we can figure

00:16:02.880 --> 00:16:05.580
out how long they live. We can also figure out how

00:16:05.580 --> 00:16:09.720
often they become pregnant and give birth.

00:16:09.720 --> 00:16:13.000
So, they give birth to these tiny little manta burritos,

00:16:13.000 --> 00:16:17.340
I like to call them. We know based on those photo ID

00:16:17.340 --> 00:16:20.560
records that that happens, depending on the place,

00:16:20.560 --> 00:16:23.940
about every two to seven years. And we think that

00:16:23.940 --> 00:16:27.480
depends a lot on productivity, so how much food is available

00:16:27.480 --> 00:16:30.440
in that area, as to whether or not the animals, the

00:16:30.440 --> 00:16:33.480
female mantas are choosing to mate and then become

00:16:33.480 --> 00:16:37.080
pregnant.  So, we're gonna have another little poll here.

00:16:37.080 --> 00:16:40.360
And I'm gonna ask you guys: How many pups or

00:16:40.360 --> 00:16:44.740
offspring do you guys think that one female manta

00:16:44.740 --> 00:16:48.060
gives birth to or has in a single pregnancy?

00:16:48.140 --> 00:16:49.560
And I'm gonna take a drink of water while you guys

00:16:49.560 --> 00:16:50.840
answer that.

00:16:50.840 --> 00:16:52.460
- (Claire Fackler speaking) Alright, it looks like people

00:16:52.460 --> 00:16:58.560
are voting, so the poll is up there. Pop quiz, also keep

00:16:58.600 --> 00:17:05.380
you engaged in the webinar. Alright, we're at over 75%

00:17:05.380 --> 00:17:08.260
voted, excellent. The rest of you, keep it coming in for

00:17:08.260 --> 00:17:11.800
another couple, ten seconds or so, and then we'll go

00:17:11.800 --> 00:17:14.220
ahead and close it.

00:17:17.200 --> 00:17:22.420
Alright, we got 85 % of the audience has voted, so I'm

00:17:22.420 --> 00:17:25.120
gonna go ahead and close the poll, and share the

00:17:25.120 --> 00:17:26.800
results with everyone.

00:17:27.120 --> 00:17:29.560
- (Joshua Stewart speaking) Alright, so coming up

00:17:29.560 --> 00:17:33.200
at the rear twenty, seven percent of you, ten percent of

00:17:33.200 --> 00:17:37.040
you, or fifteen sorry said ten animals, a third of you think

00:17:37.040 --> 00:17:40.720
five offspring, and then almost half of you got the right

00:17:40.720 --> 00:17:45.420
answer, which is one offspring, one pup per pregnancy.

00:17:45.420 --> 00:17:48.440
And so I understand why some of you guys were saying

00:17:48.440 --> 00:17:51.320
five, ten, twenty. Most other sharks and rays or

00:17:51.320 --> 00:17:55.400
elasmobranchs have much larger litter sizes. So, great

00:17:55.440 --> 00:17:59.620
white sharks, one of the more endangered species, and

00:17:59.740 --> 00:18:01.860
more sort of the popular species that we know a lot

00:18:01.860 --> 00:18:05.980
about, they'll have around ten or twelve pups per

00:18:05.980 --> 00:18:09.020
pregnancy. And whale sharks can have way more than

00:18:09.020 --> 00:18:12.900
that, we think, maybe as many as fifty or more.

00:18:12.900 --> 00:18:17.080
But mantas devote a ton of energy into having just one

00:18:17.080 --> 00:18:21.140
very fit and healthy pup. And so that is an

00:18:21.140 --> 00:18:24.380
extraordinarily low reproductive rate. That's what we

00:18:24.380 --> 00:18:28.940
think of for mammals for the most part, although some

00:18:28.940 --> 00:18:32.300
mammals can have a lot more offspring than that.

00:18:32.300 --> 00:18:38.180
So, super low reproductive rate and, what was I going to

00:18:38.180 --> 00:18:41.700
say here, oh yeah, we have really little information on

00:18:41.700 --> 00:18:45.000
what these pups do after they're born. So, we know that

00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:47.820
there's virtually no parental care, so once the pups are

00:18:47.820 --> 00:18:50.880
born, they're perfectly self-sufficient. They're pretty

00:18:50.880 --> 00:18:53.600
big, as well, even though they're wrapped up in these

00:18:53.600 --> 00:18:56.660
little burritos when they come up, or come out rather.

00:18:56.660 --> 00:19:01.720
They're around five or six feet across already. So they

00:19:01.720 --> 00:19:04.440
seem to do alright surviving in the wild, but they don't

00:19:04.440 --> 00:19:06.980
stick with mom. They go off and do their own thing.

00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:10.400
And we know virtually nothing about what the pups do.

00:19:10.400 --> 00:19:12.920
So, just in the last couple years, we've been learning

00:19:12.960 --> 00:19:16.100
a little bit about the reef manta pups. They seem to

00:19:16.300 --> 00:19:20.380
spend time in lagoon habitats, but the oceanic mantas

00:19:20.380 --> 00:19:23.900
and the mobulas for that matter, we pretty much never

00:19:23.900 --> 00:19:27.300
see young mantas, juvenile mantas, especially not the

00:19:27.300 --> 00:19:29.840
newborns. So, we really don't know where they're going

00:19:29.840 --> 00:19:32.940
or what they're doing, which makes it hard to get a

00:19:32.940 --> 00:19:36.520
sense of what that important juvenile habitat might be,

00:19:36.520 --> 00:19:39.460
when it comes to protecting these guys.

00:19:39.460 --> 00:19:46.160
Alright, so what does it look like, and where do baby

00:19:46.160 --> 00:19:49.580
mantas come from? So, they have these really amazing

00:19:49.580 --> 00:19:53.300
courtship dances, if you will, where we call them mating

00:19:53.300 --> 00:19:57.320
trains. So, coming up right here, this is a big pregnant

00:19:57.320 --> 00:20:02.180
female. You can see that pregnancy bulge in a second

00:20:02.180 --> 00:20:04.420
when she starts going down, there you go, so she's

00:20:04.420 --> 00:20:09.020
looking a little big. And she'll typically be tailed by two,

00:20:09.020 --> 00:20:12.500
three, four, sometimes as many as ten males. And the

00:20:12.500 --> 00:20:15.460
males are all sort of vying for position so that they can

00:20:15.460 --> 00:20:18.560
get up behind her and have the lucky opportunity of

00:20:18.560 --> 00:20:21.740
mating with her. And so, we think what's happening is

00:20:21.780 --> 00:20:24.580
that the females are leading all these males on a merry

00:20:24.580 --> 00:20:28.860
chase to see who's the most fit among them. And so

00:20:28.860 --> 00:20:33.540
these mating trains can last for four, five, six hour,

00:20:33.540 --> 00:20:36.380
maybe longer, and some of the stuff that we've been

00:20:36.380 --> 00:20:39.860
learning recently, which I think I'll talk about later, is that

00:20:39.860 --> 00:20:43.240
a lot of these trains might happen continually, maybe

00:20:43.240 --> 00:20:48.380
for multiple days. And so, eventually she selects the

00:20:48.380 --> 00:20:52.080
most fit male, and I will note that she's not mating while

00:20:52.080 --> 00:20:55.540
she's pregnant, but we think that they'll mate

00:20:55.540 --> 00:20:58.680
immediately after they give birth. So, this female is

00:20:58.680 --> 00:21:02.100
probably in the initial stages of courtship, she'll

00:21:02.100 --> 00:21:05.140
probably go off and give birth shortly, and then there will

00:21:05.140 --> 00:21:08.220
be another one of these mating trains, and she'll select

00:21:08.220 --> 00:21:11.820
the lucky male. If I can get to the next one here, that's

00:21:11.820 --> 00:21:16.020
another view of a mating train. So, she'll select her lucky

00:21:16.020 --> 00:21:20.660
male, and he'll come up along side her, start to get a

00:21:20.660 --> 00:21:25.140
little snuggly. He'll then bite down on her pectoral fin,

00:21:25.140 --> 00:21:28.700
and so mantas don't have teeth; their teeth have evolved

00:21:28.700 --> 00:21:32.380
into these sort of sandpapery strips, which allow them

00:21:32.380 --> 00:21:35.980
to bite down on those pectoral fins and get a good grip,

00:21:35.980 --> 00:21:39.640
and then they'll flip belly-to-belly and copulate. And like

00:21:39.640 --> 00:21:42.080
you can see in this photo down at the bottom, often a

00:21:42.080 --> 00:21:45.780
jealous male will come in and try to break them up, try

00:21:45.780 --> 00:21:48.760
and have his own opportunity to mate. So, they're very

00:21:48.760 --> 00:21:52.180
similar to humans in that sense, along with their low

00:21:52.180 --> 00:21:55.800
reproductive rates. And then the female becomes

00:21:55.800 --> 00:21:59.740
pregnant, the gestation period, or the pregnancy, lasts

00:21:59.740 --> 00:22:02.920
about a year, and then she gives birth to her single pup,

00:22:02.920 --> 00:22:06.760
who goes off and does we're-not-sure-what. So that's

00:22:06.760 --> 00:22:09.820
another big knowledge gap for us in terms of what the

00:22:09.820 --> 00:22:14.800
offspring, what the pups are doing. Often those mating

00:22:14.800 --> 00:22:18.160
trains will be confused for a really similar looking thing,

00:22:18.160 --> 00:22:21.920
which we're looking at here, which is a feeding chain.

00:22:22.000 --> 00:22:25.400
And so now we're gonna pull up our last poll question.

00:22:25.400 --> 00:22:28.600
And we're gonna see how many of you guys know what

00:22:28.600 --> 00:22:32.360
manta rays eat. So, are these carnivores (meat eaters),

00:22:32.360 --> 00:22:37.000
are they herbivores, are they planktivores, which means

00:22:37.000 --> 00:22:40.700
they feed on plankton, or are they piscivores, which

00:22:40.700 --> 00:22:44.240
means they feed on fish? What do you think?

00:22:44.240 --> 00:22:45.880
- (Claire Fackler speaking) Alright, we're getting to

00:22:45.880 --> 00:22:48.460
almost the fifty percent mark here. Okay, we're over that,

00:22:48.460 --> 00:22:50.940
so go ahead and vote on the quick poll.

00:22:54.380 --> 00:22:57.680
- These polls are cool; thanks for being engaged, guys.

00:22:58.580 --> 00:23:00.280
- (Claire Fackler speaking) Great, we're almost at the

00:23:00.280 --> 00:23:04.280
eighty-five percent, so one or two more people come on.

00:23:05.620 --> 00:23:09.020
Alright, we'll go ahead and close and share the results.

00:23:09.020 --> 00:23:13.480
- Hey, okay so most of guys have got some good

00:23:13.480 --> 00:23:16.500
background information on mantas. So, most of you

00:23:16.500 --> 00:23:19.800
said planktivores, almost all of you, which is correct.

00:23:19.800 --> 00:23:22.980
So, these guys feed on plankton, but what's interesting

00:23:23.000 --> 00:23:25.540
and what we're actually learning more and more about

00:23:25.540 --> 00:23:29.220
is that occasionally, they'll also feed on fish. And so

00:23:29.220 --> 00:23:32.100
in their stomach contents we'll find small fishes

00:23:32.100 --> 00:23:34.740
sometimes, and we actually have some observations of

00:23:34.740 --> 00:23:39.020
mantas and mobulas, especially mobulas, feeding on

00:23:39.020 --> 00:23:42.020
schools of fishes. So, they're mainly planktivores,

00:23:42.020 --> 00:23:44.880
sometimes they feed on fish, but they have these

00:23:44.880 --> 00:23:48.280
incredible filtering mechanisms and these huge mouths,

00:23:48.280 --> 00:23:51.280
which allow them to feed on huge quantities of these

00:23:51.280 --> 00:23:56.280
tiny zooplankton, typically. And so those two big fins,

00:23:56.280 --> 00:24:00.120
which give them the name "devil ray," or manta ray, but

00:24:00.120 --> 00:24:03.060
the devil rays when the fins are rolled up, they're

00:24:03.060 --> 00:24:05.740
cephalic fins, they look like horns, which is where they

00:24:05.740 --> 00:24:08.200
got their name from originally. So, when they're feeding,

00:24:08.200 --> 00:24:11.260
those will unroll, which you can see in these photos, and

00:24:11.260 --> 00:24:14.880
it will actually help channel water into their mouths, and

00:24:14.880 --> 00:24:18.320
they have these amazing filtering mechanisms that

00:24:18.320 --> 00:24:21.360
protect their gills, as well, which filter out all of the

00:24:21.360 --> 00:24:25.700
zooplankton, little fishes, and allow them to strain out

00:24:25.700 --> 00:24:28.500
huge quantities of food. So, that's how they get really

00:24:28.500 --> 00:24:31.340
big. We think of a lot of other filter feeders and

00:24:31.340 --> 00:24:35.000
planktivores in marine systems as being some of the

00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:38.440
largest animals in the ocean, so Baline whales are a

00:24:38.440 --> 00:24:41.580
really good example of that, whale sharks, basking

00:24:41.580 --> 00:24:45.120
sharks, manta rays, all of these guys do a really good

00:24:45.120 --> 00:24:48.300
job of making a living by feeding on huge quantities of

00:24:48.300 --> 00:24:52.240
really tiny prey. And mantas are really neat, they've got a

00:24:52.240 --> 00:24:54.860
number of different feeding modes. What we're looking

00:24:54.860 --> 00:24:58.120
at on the left here, there's chain feeding. They'll actually

00:24:58.120 --> 00:25:01.620
line up, so they'll get one behind the other and slightly

00:25:01.620 --> 00:25:05.660
above the one in front of him or her. And plantkon can't

00:25:05.660 --> 00:25:09.480
move very quickly, but their escape mechanism is to

00:25:09.480 --> 00:25:13.700
jump vertically really quickly in the water. So, that's sort

00:25:13.700 --> 00:25:15.820
of their once chance of getting away from the giant

00:25:15.820 --> 00:25:18.460
mouth of a manta bearing down on them. And so the

00:25:18.460 --> 00:25:21.120
mantas will line up in these chains, so that whatever

00:25:21.120 --> 00:25:24.020
zooplankton jump up from the animal, the manta in

00:25:24.020 --> 00:25:27.160
front trying to avoid it, then quickly get scooped up

00:25:27.160 --> 00:25:30.040
by the manta following it. So, that's a really neat

00:25:30.040 --> 00:25:33.980
cooperative feeding mechanism. Really typical is what

00:25:33.980 --> 00:25:36.600
we see down here on the bottom right, this is surface

00:25:36.600 --> 00:25:39.520
ram feeding. So these guys will come right up to the

00:25:39.520 --> 00:25:42.780
surface and they're using the surface to trap their prey

00:25:42.780 --> 00:25:45.960
so that the zooplankton can't jump as easily, and they

00:25:45.960 --> 00:25:49.080
just go along the surface, they skim it, open up their big

00:25:49.080 --> 00:25:53.080
mouths, and then they filter in all that sea water. And

00:25:53.080 --> 00:25:55.260
another really neat one which manta rays are famous

00:25:55.260 --> 00:25:58.880
for are these barrel rolls. We've got a little small inset

00:25:58.880 --> 00:26:01.600
photo; it sounds like you guys have spent a lot of time

00:26:01.600 --> 00:26:04.780
in the water with mantas, so you've probably seen

00:26:04.780 --> 00:26:08.420
maybe photos of this or mantas doing this in real life.

00:26:08.420 --> 00:26:10.920
So what they'll do is they'll find a really dense patch of

00:26:10.920 --> 00:26:13.780
zooplankton, and instead of, you know, swimming along

00:26:13.780 --> 00:26:16.040
and having to turn around and come back, they'll do

00:26:16.040 --> 00:26:18.700
these big barrel rolls, where they flip and they keep

00:26:18.700 --> 00:26:21.200
hitting the same patch over and over and over again

00:26:21.200 --> 00:26:25.340
to maximize that feeding efficiency. And my personal

00:26:25.340 --> 00:26:28.000
favorite, and what I think is the coolest feeding

00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:30.900
mechanism, is of course the cyclone feeding that we

00:26:30.900 --> 00:26:34.800
mentioned earlier. So, this only known in one place in

00:26:34.800 --> 00:26:37.440
the world, which is in the Maldives, and you'll get these

00:26:37.440 --> 00:26:40.400
massive groups of mantas, which will all come together

00:26:40.400 --> 00:26:42.940
and form these big cyclones. And when you're on the

00:26:42.940 --> 00:26:46.300
outside of these cyclones, you can actually feel a little

00:26:46.300 --> 00:26:49.300
bit of a current being created. So, you feel like you're

00:26:49.300 --> 00:26:52.740
being sucked into the vortex, and it seems like that

00:26:52.740 --> 00:26:55.740
might help concentrate the zooplankton that's already

00:26:55.740 --> 00:26:59.200
quite dense in this little bay where this occurs and again

00:26:59.200 --> 00:27:02.500
increasing the density increases the foraging efficiency,

00:27:02.500 --> 00:27:05.560
and any zooplankton that are trying to escape from a

00:27:05.560 --> 00:27:08.140
manta are, you know, quickly going to be scooped by the

00:27:08.140 --> 00:27:10.240
one right behind it. So, they've got some really cool

00:27:10.240 --> 00:27:17.140
cooperative feeding behaviors. So, just to recap here,

00:27:17.140 --> 00:27:20.920
what we've just talked about, mantas are big, so up to

00:27:20.920 --> 00:27:24.060
six or seven meters across, they live for a long time,

00:27:24.060 --> 00:27:27.660
although we don't exactly how long. They've got these

00:27:27.660 --> 00:27:31.860
extraordinarily low reproductive rates, and as far as we

00:27:31.860 --> 00:27:35.240
can tell, they seem to have pretty small population sizes,

00:27:35.240 --> 00:27:38.040
and I'm not gonna talk about this today, but that's

00:27:38.040 --> 00:27:40.720
another thing that we can track by identifying those

00:27:40.720 --> 00:27:44.280
unique individuals with their spot patterns, we can use

00:27:44.280 --> 00:27:47.100
some complicated statistics to help us figure out how

00:27:47.100 --> 00:27:50.460
many animals there are in a population, and everything

00:27:50.460 --> 00:27:53.200
that we've done so far suggests that these populations

00:27:53.200 --> 00:27:56.060
are quite small, so anywhere from a few hundred

00:27:56.060 --> 00:27:59.120
animals to a few thousand animals in any one area,

00:27:59.120 --> 00:28:01.660
which is not a very big population. So, when you add

00:28:01.660 --> 00:28:06.200
all of these things up, what you end up with is an animal

00:28:06.200 --> 00:28:09.640
that's really susceptible to fisheries. So, being big

00:28:09.640 --> 00:28:12.980
means they're easy to catch, being long-lived and having

00:28:12.980 --> 00:28:15.700
low reproductive rates means that they're not producing

00:28:15.700 --> 00:28:18.320
a lot of new animals to replace the ones that are being

00:28:18.320 --> 00:28:21.040
captured, and then if they've got a small population size

00:28:21.040 --> 00:28:24.520
to begin with, it doesn't take the removal of too many to

00:28:24.520 --> 00:28:28.520
make a really significant impact on the population.

00:28:28.520 --> 00:28:30.920
So, of course, fisheries are a problem for mantas the

00:28:30.920 --> 00:28:34.040
same way they are for pretty everything that lives in the

00:28:34.040 --> 00:28:38.300
ocean. I like to say that mantas' super power is that

00:28:38.300 --> 00:28:41.260
they're able to get captured in pretty much every type of

00:28:41.260 --> 00:28:45.440
fishing gear. So, you know, obvious ones are gill nets,

00:28:45.440 --> 00:28:48.800
those nets that are typically used to catch tuna that will

00:28:48.800 --> 00:28:52.240
just be set adrift to float. They also catch pretty much

00:28:52.240 --> 00:28:55.880
everything else: turtles, marine mammals, and mantas

00:28:55.880 --> 00:28:59.680
and mobulas, that's no surprise. They also get captured

00:28:59.680 --> 00:29:03.280
in purse seines, also typically targeting tuna. Some of

00:29:03.280 --> 00:29:07.120
the more unusual ones, and that is sort of a mystery still

00:29:07.120 --> 00:29:10.500
to me, is that mantas manage to get caught pretty

00:29:10.500 --> 00:29:14.200
frequently even in long lines. So, those are going for

00:29:14.200 --> 00:29:17.240
apex predators, you know, they're baited hooks dangling

00:29:17.240 --> 00:29:20.200
in the water, but mantas will swim through the long

00:29:20.200 --> 00:29:24.100
lines, get tangled up, and die in those fisheries as well.

00:29:24.100 --> 00:29:26.940
Then this one that we're looking at here is from Peru.

00:29:26.940 --> 00:29:30.480
This is a trawl fishery, so this is a mid-water trawl, they

00:29:30.480 --> 00:29:33.480
drag a big net through the water down around a hundred

00:29:33.480 --> 00:29:37.220
meters or so, and they occasionally get mantas in that

00:29:37.220 --> 00:29:40.360
fishery as well. So, bycatch is a major issue, it's a

00:29:40.360 --> 00:29:44.080
persistent issue, and it has been an issue for mantas

00:29:44.080 --> 00:29:46.940
and mobulas, along with all kinds of other species, for

00:29:46.940 --> 00:29:51.160
a really long time. But more recently, in the last ten or

00:29:51.160 --> 00:29:55.380
fifteen years or so, there's been an alarming trend,

00:29:55.380 --> 00:29:59.080
upward trend, in targeted fisheries for mantas.

00:29:59.080 --> 00:30:02.300
So, manta meat is pretty low quality, there are some

00:30:02.300 --> 00:30:05.440
places that have subsistence fisheries for mantas,

00:30:05.440 --> 00:30:08.220
where they'll actually eat the meat, but not very many

00:30:08.220 --> 00:30:11.140
places because, again, it's not a very tasty meat.

00:30:11.140 --> 00:30:13.780
And in the last ten years or so, they've begun to be

00:30:13.780 --> 00:30:18.280
targeted for their gill rakers. So, the gill rakers are those

00:30:18.280 --> 00:30:20.700
filtering mechanisms that I was talking about earlier,

00:30:20.700 --> 00:30:23.760
which allow mantas to strain zooplankton out of the

00:30:23.760 --> 00:30:27.880
water. And the reason they're being caught for these is

00:30:27.880 --> 00:30:30.940
because, like many other things, the gill plates, or the

00:30:30.940 --> 00:30:34.840
gill rakers are dried and sent to typically China, some

00:30:34.840 --> 00:30:38.020
other Asian countries, where they're used as a pseudo

00:30:38.020 --> 00:30:41.220
remedy. So, there doesn't seem to be any true medicinal

00:30:41.220 --> 00:30:44.180
effect, but there are a lot of these sort of traditional

00:30:44.180 --> 00:30:48.820
medicines like, you know, gill plates and many other

00:30:48.820 --> 00:30:53.300
things, which are driving these international fisheries

00:30:53.300 --> 00:30:56.820
and trades for mantas, for mobulas, for a lot of other

00:30:56.820 --> 00:31:00.500
species. And so what you're looking at here is one stall

00:31:00.500 --> 00:31:05.080
in one dry seafood wholesale market in China. And this

00:31:05.080 --> 00:31:09.340
probably represents many hundreds if not thousands of

00:31:09.340 --> 00:31:12.260
mantas and mobulas. And remember what we talked

00:31:12.260 --> 00:31:16.320
before about how small their populations are, how low

00:31:16.320 --> 00:31:21.800
their reproductive rates are, and there's a lot evidence,

00:31:21.800 --> 00:31:24.300
you know, to suggest that the populations are declining

00:31:24.300 --> 00:31:27.000
because of this. Sorry I'm flipping around through

00:31:27.000 --> 00:31:31.360
slides. In this view, I don't get my upcoming slide, so

00:31:31.360 --> 00:31:33.420
sometimes I have to jump ahead and see what I'm

00:31:33.420 --> 00:31:36.880
gonna talk about next. Okay, so this is sort of the state

00:31:36.880 --> 00:31:39.620
of knowledge that I had seven years ago, when I started

00:31:39.620 --> 00:31:43.520
working with these guys. And I was, you know, instantly

00:31:43.520 --> 00:31:46.540
hooked, really wanted to keep pursuing this. They're a

00:31:46.540 --> 00:31:49.700
big, charismatic animal, there are big knowledge gaps,

00:31:49.700 --> 00:31:52.760
there's a lot we don't know, which provides opportunities

00:31:52.760 --> 00:31:56.240
for your research to actually make an impact both in

00:31:56.240 --> 00:31:58.400
the knowledge of the animal and also in the

00:31:58.400 --> 00:32:00.840
conservation issues. And that was really the thing that

00:32:00.840 --> 00:32:04.000
pushed me over the edge, was, you know, there are huge

00:32:04.000 --> 00:32:06.640
fisheries for these animals, there are clear impacts, at

00:32:06.640 --> 00:32:09.780
least we think there are probably clear impacts, and yet

00:32:09.780 --> 00:32:13.100
we don't have the information that we need in order to

00:32:13.100 --> 00:32:15.940
effectively manage and protect populations and the

00:32:15.940 --> 00:32:21.340
species overall. So, that led me to jump headfirst and

00:32:21.340 --> 00:32:24.400
start working with these guys, and the species that I

00:32:24.400 --> 00:32:28.460
was most interested in are these oceanic mantas.

00:32:28.460 --> 00:32:32.220
So, one year before I started working with mantas, a

00:32:32.220 --> 00:32:36.420
paper came out that split the genus into two species,

00:32:36.420 --> 00:32:39.800
into the reef mantas and the oceanic mantas. And the

00:32:39.800 --> 00:32:42.340
reef mantas are the ones that live in more tropical

00:32:42.340 --> 00:32:45.500
habitats, they live close to shore, and as it turned out,

00:32:45.500 --> 00:32:47.860
pretty much everything that we knew about manta rays

00:32:47.860 --> 00:32:51.820
came from reef mantas. So, we knew even less about

00:32:51.820 --> 00:32:54.460
oceanic mantas, and we still know very little about

00:32:54.460 --> 00:33:02.220
oceanic mantas. And so a good friend now, so just to

00:33:02.220 --> 00:33:05.560
give you a sense of where these guys live, and another

00:33:05.560 --> 00:33:08.740
reason that I'm fascinated by them, is they live sort of

00:33:08.740 --> 00:33:11.800
out in these pelagic habitats, which you can see

00:33:11.800 --> 00:33:15.500
illustrated really nicely, I think, in this photo. And some

00:33:15.500 --> 00:33:18.780
of the islands that I work at quite a bit are the

00:33:18.780 --> 00:33:21.900
Revillagigedo Islands down in Mexico. So, those are the

00:33:21.900 --> 00:33:25.500
ones circled in yellow in the bottom left, and they're

00:33:25.500 --> 00:33:29.740
about 300 miles from the mainland and 300 miles from

00:33:29.740 --> 00:33:32.660
any other major land mass. And when you're out at

00:33:32.660 --> 00:33:35.800
these islands, you really feel like there's absolutely

00:33:35.800 --> 00:33:38.200
nothing around. You may as well be out in the middle of

00:33:38.200 --> 00:33:41.840
the Pacific. And this is one of the best spots to go and

00:33:41.840 --> 00:33:46.020
see oceanic mantas. And a colleague of mine at the

00:33:46.020 --> 00:33:48.740
time, who's now a close friend of mine, Bob Rubin,

00:33:48.740 --> 00:33:51.500
who you see up there in the top right, he's been working

00:33:51.500 --> 00:33:53.840
with the mantas out at these islands for the last

00:33:53.840 --> 00:33:58.180
40 years. He invited me to come out on one of his

00:33:58.180 --> 00:34:02.280
expeditions, this was six or seven years ago, and he

00:34:02.280 --> 00:34:05.040
started to explain to me what they've been finding there

00:34:05.040 --> 00:34:07.820
by taking photos, again, of those spot patterns and

00:34:07.820 --> 00:34:11.280
tracking individual mantas for pretty much that entire

00:34:11.280 --> 00:34:14.940
40-year period. And so, some of the animals have these

00:34:14.940 --> 00:34:19.540
extraordinary gaps of up to fifteen, eighteen, twenty-two

00:34:19.540 --> 00:34:23.640
years, in some cases, between sightings. So, that's one

00:34:23.640 --> 00:34:26.340
animal that was photographed, you know, back in the

00:34:26.340 --> 00:34:30.140
80's or 90's and then wasn't seen for twenty years, and

00:34:30.140 --> 00:34:33.340
then someone took a photo of that animal again, right?

00:34:33.340 --> 00:34:35.900
And there's a number of animals that have those huge

00:34:35.900 --> 00:34:39.280
gaps, those really long periods between sightings.

00:34:39.280 --> 00:34:41.980
And so you start to think about, you know,  where was

00:34:41.980 --> 00:34:45.020
that animal in those intervening twenty years, you know,

00:34:45.020 --> 00:34:48.500
was it hanging out here, did we just miss it, did it swim

00:34:48.500 --> 00:34:52.040
all the way to Indonesia, did it swim to the Indian Ocean

00:34:52.040 --> 00:34:54.400
and then turn around and come back twenty years later,

00:34:54.400 --> 00:34:56.960
and we just happened to be lucky enough to catch it?

00:34:56.960 --> 00:34:59.540
And so these were some of the sort of fascinating

00:34:59.540 --> 00:35:02.120
questions that are rolling around in my mind, and had

00:35:02.120 --> 00:35:04.600
been rolling around in Bob's mind and others for a long

00:35:04.600 --> 00:35:08.060
time. And certainly, when we think about other

00:35:08.060 --> 00:35:10.960
large-boded animals that live in these offshore habitats,

00:35:10.960 --> 00:35:14.060
these guys move around a ton. What you're looking at

00:35:14.060 --> 00:35:19.620
now is a figure of tag tracks of pretty much, not all, but

00:35:19.620 --> 00:35:23.420
a really good representation of the big oceanic animals

00:35:23.420 --> 00:35:26.780
that live in the Pacific. So, these are, you know, the big

00:35:26.780 --> 00:35:30.380
Baline whales, a lot of the tunas, some of the sharks,

00:35:30.380 --> 00:35:34.400
etc. And turtles, as well. And what you'll see is that

00:35:34.400 --> 00:35:37.420
some of these guys are literally crossing the entire

00:35:37.420 --> 00:35:40.060
Pacific Ocean, and some of them are doing that every

00:35:40.060 --> 00:35:43.240
year, they'll make these round trip migrations. So, these

00:35:43.240 --> 00:35:46.000
big animals have the capacity to move extraordinary

00:35:46.000 --> 00:35:49.080
distances, and we were thinking at the time that that's

00:35:49.080 --> 00:35:51.900
probably what's causing these, you know, twenty-year

00:35:51.900 --> 00:35:54.700
gaps, these long periods between sightings, are these

00:35:54.700 --> 00:35:57.600
sort of epic migrations. And certainly these big mantas

00:35:57.600 --> 00:36:02.960
are capable of undertaking a movement like that. Now,

00:36:02.960 --> 00:36:06.440
you know, this was an interesting question for us, but

00:36:06.440 --> 00:36:11.380
it also had a very pressing conservation concern. So, we

00:36:11.380 --> 00:36:14.640
actually at the time didn't know what to call a

00:36:14.640 --> 00:36:17.520
population of mantas. So, when we're talking about the

00:36:17.520 --> 00:36:20.940
population of oceanic mantas at a certain place,

00:36:20.940 --> 00:36:24.320
is that mantas from the entire Pacific that are making

00:36:24.320 --> 00:36:27.900
up that population or are they more restricted

00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:31.880
regionally? And around this time, more information

00:36:31.880 --> 00:36:35.600
about declines of mantas and mobulas in response to

00:36:35.660 --> 00:36:39.040
all the fisheries and the bycatch they were experiencing

00:36:39.040 --> 00:36:42.320
started to come out. So, we started to have some more

00:36:42.320 --> 00:36:44.660
concrete evidence that populations were in fact

00:36:44.660 --> 00:36:47.060
declining both through people

00:36:47.060 --> 00:36:48.880
seeing fewer and fewer mantas and

00:36:48.880 --> 00:36:52.900
mobulas in the water, divers like that. And also catch

00:36:52.900 --> 00:36:56.940
rates in targeted fisheries were declining despite people

00:36:56.940 --> 00:36:59.960
trying just as hard to catch mantas. So, that's normally

00:36:59.960 --> 00:37:02.180
not a good sign. Normally, that means that there are

00:37:02.180 --> 00:37:06.240
fewer mantas available to be caught. And to illustrate

00:37:06.320 --> 00:37:09.680
why the movements of these animals impacts their

00:37:09.680 --> 00:37:13.760
management and protection, I've got a few schematics

00:37:13.760 --> 00:37:17.140
here to sort of explain that. So, this first scenario

00:37:17.140 --> 00:37:20.220
here is what would happen if mantas are moving across

00:37:20.220 --> 00:37:24.240
the entire world, right? So, they're moving from Mexico

00:37:24.240 --> 00:37:26.840
over to the western Pacific, maybe they're spending

00:37:26.840 --> 00:37:29.760
some time over in the Indian Ocean, and you've got

00:37:29.760 --> 00:37:33.260
what's called a panmictic population. So, this scenario

00:37:33.260 --> 00:37:35.860
would be pretty much mantas swimming all over the

00:37:35.860 --> 00:37:38.900
place, and then when you've got a few of these major

00:37:38.900 --> 00:37:43.480
fisheries in places like Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Peru,

00:37:43.480 --> 00:37:48.440
and Ecuador, those fisheries are drawing from a much

00:37:48.440 --> 00:37:51.900
larger pool of animals, right? So, you might not see

00:37:51.900 --> 00:37:55.680
those declines quite as quickly, but it does mean that

00:37:55.680 --> 00:37:59.640
this requires international cooperation in order to make

00:37:59.640 --> 00:38:02.960
any sort of meaningful impact on the population trends

00:38:03.000 --> 00:38:06.000
and prevent declines, right? So, a big fishery in

00:38:06.000 --> 00:38:09.480
Indonesia, even though the fishery itself is restricted to

00:38:09.480 --> 00:38:12.920
Indonesian waters, in this scenario could still be

00:38:12.920 --> 00:38:16.380
impacting animals from Mexico, Mozambique, Australia,

00:38:16.380 --> 00:38:19.360
and so on that happen to swim through that area where

00:38:19.360 --> 00:38:24.880
they might be fished. I think the opposite case is pretty

00:38:24.880 --> 00:38:28.400
clear after that explanation. So if instead you have these

00:38:28.400 --> 00:38:31.480
sort of small, spatially-restricted populations, and

00:38:31.480 --> 00:38:35.400
mantas aren't actually moving that far, then these local

00:38:35.400 --> 00:38:38.880
fisheries aren't having a huge impact on the, you know,

00:38:38.880 --> 00:38:42.380
entire ocean basin and all these different populations,

00:38:42.380 --> 00:38:45.640
but they're having a much greater impact on a local

00:38:45.640 --> 00:38:49.360
population, right, because it's a smaller population,

00:38:49.360 --> 00:38:52.300
it's going to decline much  more quickly, and once it's

00:38:52.300 --> 00:38:56.340
gone or depleted or wiped out, you're not going to have

00:38:56.340 --> 00:38:59.460
that same level of connectivity which is gonna bring

00:38:59.460 --> 00:39:02.900
new animals to re-colonize that area. So, these are the

00:39:02.900 --> 00:39:06.900
two sort of extremes, one is not necessarily better than

00:39:06.900 --> 00:39:09.280
the other, it just really depends how you're going to

00:39:09.300 --> 00:39:12.180
approach managing these populations, depending on

00:39:12.180 --> 00:39:15.160
how they move around and how their populations are

00:39:15.160 --> 00:39:19.820
connected. So, to look at this, we started by deploying

00:39:19.820 --> 00:39:23.380
some satellite tags, so we had a couple sites in Mexico,

00:39:23.380 --> 00:39:26.080
we also looked at the western Pacific Ocean in

00:39:26.080 --> 00:39:29.000
Indonesia, and then also wanted to supplement that

00:39:29.000 --> 00:39:31.980
with some other methods that gave us a different

00:39:31.980 --> 00:39:34.920
perspective on a longer time scale, so we were

00:39:34.920 --> 00:39:38.060
collecting tissue samples from Mexico, from Indonesia,

00:39:38.060 --> 00:39:41.600
and then also from a market in Sri Lanka.

00:39:41.600 --> 00:39:45.740
I'm going to give you guys a sort of a taste of what field

00:39:45.740 --> 00:39:48.880
work looks like. I've got a few videos throughout the

00:39:48.880 --> 00:39:52.800
presentation. So, this is at that site in Mexico, this is an

00:39:52.800 --> 00:39:56.580
oceanic manta, it's probably about five meters across,

00:39:56.580 --> 00:40:00.980
and this is us deploying a satellite tag. I don't have a tag

00:40:00.980 --> 00:40:04.740
with me, but I do have a similar tip right here, which

00:40:04.740 --> 00:40:08.400
maybe you can see. So, I'm just going to rewind and play

00:40:08.400 --> 00:40:12.180
that one more time. These tags look kind of vicious, and

00:40:12.180 --> 00:40:15.440
people are always worried that we're injuring the animals.

00:40:15.480 --> 00:40:18.780
Certainly the welfare of the animals is, you know, our top

00:40:18.780 --> 00:40:23.540
priority, and you'll see here from the reaction that they

00:40:23.540 --> 00:40:26.160
don't seem to mind too much when we tag them. So,

00:40:26.160 --> 00:40:28.740
that's a satellite tag being deployed, and then we follow

00:40:28.740 --> 00:40:32.160
it up with a biospy, whenever possible, to get a small

00:40:32.160 --> 00:40:35.600
tissue sample, which gives us the ability to do genetic

00:40:35.600 --> 00:40:38.320
analyses and some other work. So, here are some

00:40:38.320 --> 00:40:41.440
happy mantas swimming around with satellite tags.

00:40:41.460 --> 00:40:43.420
They'll still come back, they'll play with us, they'll hang

00:40:43.420 --> 00:40:46.660
out with us for a few hours, even after we tag them.

00:40:46.660 --> 00:40:49.060
So, we don't think that there's really much of an impact

00:40:49.060 --> 00:40:53.480
from the tagging itself. So, what have we learned from

00:40:53.480 --> 00:40:59.160
the tagging? Well, despite all of our sort of expectations

00:40:59.160 --> 00:41:03.140
of these guys being these massive oceanic migrants,

00:41:03.140 --> 00:41:05.560
all of the animals that we tagged, both in Indonesia and

00:41:05.560 --> 00:41:09.680
Mexico, never left those countries. So, these dotted

00:41:09.700 --> 00:41:12.540
white lines that you see on these maps, those are the

00:41:12.560 --> 00:41:16.540
exclusive economic zones of Mexico and of Indonesia,

00:41:16.540 --> 00:41:20.400
which means that any resource within that EEZ

00:41:20.400 --> 00:41:23.320
belongs exclusively to that country. So, if they don't

00:41:23.320 --> 00:41:26.320
want somebody else to come in and fish that resource,

00:41:26.320 --> 00:41:29.000
whether it's, you know, a manta population or a

00:41:29.000 --> 00:41:32.640
tuna population, they have full control over that.

00:41:32.640 --> 00:41:34.980
So, that's important stuff that these guys never left the

00:41:34.980 --> 00:41:38.160
EEZ of their respective countries. But one of the most

00:41:38.160 --> 00:41:41.060
surprising things was in Mexico. Between these two

00:41:41.060 --> 00:41:43.720
sites that we were looking at, one at the islands that you

00:41:43.720 --> 00:41:45.980
just saw the video from, and then the other one on the

00:41:45.980 --> 00:41:50.260
mainland only about 300 miles away, which is not a

00:41:50.300 --> 00:41:53.380
long distance for an animal that's five meters across

00:41:53.380 --> 00:41:55.480
and can swim,  you know, three or four knots when it

00:41:55.480 --> 00:41:58.900
really wants to, there was no connection, no movements

00:41:58.900 --> 00:42:01.700
between those two sites. So, this kind of left us

00:42:01.700 --> 00:42:05.060
scratching our head, it was not at all what we expected,

00:42:05.060 --> 00:42:08.980
and we then followed it up with genetic analyses and

00:42:08.980 --> 00:42:12.440
stable isotope analyses. And so I'm not going to go into

00:42:12.440 --> 00:42:16.360
all the details of that because it's kind of boring if we get

00:42:16.360 --> 00:42:20.860
bogged down in the details, but this map or chart right

00:42:20.860 --> 00:42:23.800
here is to illustrate that they tell us about different

00:42:23.800 --> 00:42:27.160
time scales and different spatial scales. So, satellite

00:42:27.160 --> 00:42:30.240
tags we put out on an animal, that lasts for six months,

00:42:30.240 --> 00:42:33.000
usually, and we get to look at very fine scale

00:42:33.000 --> 00:42:36.000
movements. But just because an animal did something

00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:38.740
for six months doesn't mean that it's always going to

00:42:38.740 --> 00:42:41.460
do that. Just because it didn't move between these two

00:42:41.460 --> 00:42:44.180
sites for six months doesn't mean that it never moves

00:42:44.180 --> 00:42:47.020
between these sites. And so the isotope analyses and

00:42:47.020 --> 00:42:49.680
the genetic analyses allow us to answer those

00:42:49.680 --> 00:42:54.000
questions on larger time scales. And sure enough, again

00:42:54.000 --> 00:42:57.520
much to our surprise, we found the same thing. So, we

00:42:57.520 --> 00:43:00.080
found genetic structure, isotopic structure, between

00:43:00.080 --> 00:43:02.780
these populations that we were looking at, which

00:43:02.780 --> 00:43:06.460
indicates that even on long time scales, these animals

00:43:06.460 --> 00:43:08.740
are actually spending a lot of time in these restricted

00:43:08.740 --> 00:43:11.360
areas and probably aren't moving between

00:43:11.360 --> 00:43:15.800
populations and between regions very frequently at all.

00:43:15.800 --> 00:43:18.560
So, we have the isolated sub-population scenario

00:43:18.560 --> 00:43:24.000
that we were talking about. So, again, this came as a

00:43:24.000 --> 00:43:28.000
surprise, but in my mind it's actually quite a positive

00:43:28.000 --> 00:43:31.560
thing. So, even though these fisheries, these major

00:43:31.560 --> 00:43:35.280
fisheries, are going to have much more acute impacts

00:43:35.280 --> 00:43:38.500
on local populations, first of all, they're not going to have

00:43:38.500 --> 00:43:42.680
impacts on nearby or distant populations. So, if you

00:43:42.680 --> 00:43:46.760
protect mantas in Mexico, the Indonesian fishery isn't

00:43:46.760 --> 00:43:49.360
going to have a major impact on those mantas in

00:43:49.360 --> 00:43:53.880
Mexico. And the other thing that I see as a very positive

00:43:53.880 --> 00:43:57.480
result of this finding is that local management tends to

00:43:57.480 --> 00:44:00.940
be much more effective than large scale management.

00:44:00.940 --> 00:44:04.240
So, there's a huge body of literature that suggests that

00:44:04.240 --> 00:44:06.960
the closer you get to a resource and the stakeholders

00:44:06.960 --> 00:44:10.800
who are both impacted and affected by that resource,

00:44:10.800 --> 00:44:13.440
the more likely you are to have effective management.

00:44:13.440 --> 00:44:16.200
And we have tons of examples of that around the world,

00:44:16.200 --> 00:44:19.360
with locally managed marine protected areas that are

00:44:19.360 --> 00:44:22.960
very successful. And we also have tons of examples of

00:44:22.960 --> 00:44:25.760
international management that has been an abject

00:44:25.760 --> 00:44:29.620
failure. And so the more people you get managing a

00:44:29.620 --> 00:44:32.900
common resource, the more of that tragedy of the

00:44:32.900 --> 00:44:37.200
commons you get. And so, I think that, moving forward,

00:44:37.200 --> 00:44:41.060
putting more of an emphasis on local management

00:44:41.060 --> 00:44:43.280
is going to be really important for protecting these

00:44:43.280 --> 00:44:48.620
manta populations. So, a really good example of how

00:44:48.620 --> 00:44:51.500
this happened and what the impacts of these small

00:44:51.500 --> 00:44:54.840
local populations are comes from Mexico, close to one

00:44:54.840 --> 00:44:57.560
of the places that we were working. So, in the Sea of

00:44:57.560 --> 00:45:02.520
Cortez, to the north of our study sites, in the 70's and

00:45:02.520 --> 00:45:05.720
80's, there were several seamounts throughout the

00:45:05.720 --> 00:45:09.400
Sea of Cortez which were global hot spots for going to

00:45:09.400 --> 00:45:11.820
dive with manta rays. So, this is where all the early

00:45:11.820 --> 00:45:16.060
videos of Stan Waterman riding mantas, free divers

00:45:16.060 --> 00:45:18.780
going down and playing with mantas, these all came

00:45:18.780 --> 00:45:23.420
from the Sea of Cortez, and in the 80's and 90's, there

00:45:23.420 --> 00:45:26.660
was a major artisanal fishery, which actually continues

00:45:26.660 --> 00:45:31.500
to this day, catching mantas and mobulas. And in

00:45:31.500 --> 00:45:35.640
those ten years or so, mantas were virtually wiped out.

00:45:35.640 --> 00:45:39.940
And they never recovered, so only now, after about

00:45:39.940 --> 00:45:43.760
fifteen years of not very well enforced protection, are we

00:45:43.760 --> 00:45:47.500
starting to see one or two mantas every now and again

00:45:47.500 --> 00:45:50.700
come back into this habitat. So, that population has

00:45:50.720 --> 00:45:54.480
been virtually wiped out, and so that's a really good

00:45:54.480 --> 00:45:58.860
example of these small local populations. Once we fish

00:45:58.860 --> 00:46:02.840
them, populations decline quite quickly, and they might

00:46:02.840 --> 00:46:05.720
not come back for a very long time because they don't

00:46:05.720 --> 00:46:08.560
have that influx, they don't have the colonization of

00:46:08.560 --> 00:46:11.220
other animals coming to replace the ones that have

00:46:11.220 --> 00:46:18.140
been fished from far away. Now, another benefit, sort of

00:46:18.140 --> 00:46:23.100
in the line of local management is that in  many cases,

00:46:23.100 --> 00:46:26.900
some of these tagged animals that we tracked were

00:46:26.900 --> 00:46:29.840
restricted to such isolated areas, that spatial

00:46:29.840 --> 00:46:32.340
management can actually be effective. So, what you

00:46:32.340 --> 00:46:34.520
guys are looking at here, these are just a couple of

00:46:34.520 --> 00:46:37.540
different animals, this is another way of plotting the

00:46:37.540 --> 00:46:41.520
tags, showing the high use areas. So, the darkest grey

00:46:41.520 --> 00:46:44.640
is where the animals are spending most of their time

00:46:44.640 --> 00:46:46.600
and the lighter grey, you know, is progressively

00:46:46.600 --> 00:46:49.080
less time spent in those areas. So, these are just two

00:46:49.080 --> 00:46:52.240
tags from Indonesia, and there's actually a marine

00:46:52.240 --> 00:46:56.600
protected area that protects mantas and other sharks

00:46:56.600 --> 00:47:01.600
and rays and prevents any fishing of mantas and is

00:47:01.600 --> 00:47:05.280
completely locally managed by that regional

00:47:05.280 --> 00:47:08.480
province and by some of the local communities and

00:47:08.480 --> 00:47:11.360
villages in that area. So, the management is quite well

00:47:11.360 --> 00:47:15.040
enforced, and it looks like that marine protected area

00:47:15.040 --> 00:47:18.260
actually covers a pretty significant portion of the

00:47:18.260 --> 00:47:22.280
range of these animals that we're looking at. So, that's

00:47:22.280 --> 00:47:24.320
really good news, and I'm going to come back to this

00:47:24.320 --> 00:47:26.940
again when we start talking about the national marine

00:47:26.940 --> 00:47:30.500
sanctuary program and how it impacts mantas.

00:47:30.500 --> 00:47:34.260
But before I do that, I'm going to talk a little more about

00:47:34.260 --> 00:47:39.180
this local restricted habitat use that we're finding in

00:47:39.180 --> 00:47:42.080
mantas, because this is really strange, right? All those

00:47:42.080 --> 00:47:46.160
maps that I was showing you previously, pretty much

00:47:46.160 --> 00:47:50.220
every other big animal moves around quite a bit, makes

00:47:50.220 --> 00:47:53.100
these sort of long distance migrations, there are very

00:47:53.100 --> 00:47:56.240
few that are exhibiting patterns that are similar to

00:47:56.240 --> 00:47:58.960
mantas, where they're staying put in pretty restricted

00:47:58.960 --> 00:48:02.480
geographic areas. So, that left us scratching our heads,

00:48:02.480 --> 00:48:04.860
thinking about what's different about mantas? Why are

00:48:04.860 --> 00:48:08.720
they doing this? So, if you think about some of the most

00:48:08.720 --> 00:48:11.760
famous migrators, the big baline whales that are making

00:48:11.760 --> 00:48:14.880
these movements from up near the poles down to the

00:48:14.880 --> 00:48:18.260
tropics every year. Blue whales are a great example of

00:48:18.260 --> 00:48:21.340
this. And what these guys feed on, like what we talked

00:48:21.340 --> 00:48:26.060
about before, are these huge, really dense aggregations

00:48:26.060 --> 00:48:30.180
of, in the case of blue whales, typically krill. And these

00:48:30.180 --> 00:48:34.320
krill patches, they'll occur in super productive areas

00:48:34.320 --> 00:48:37.860
throughout the eastern tropical Pacific at different times

00:48:37.860 --> 00:48:40.920
of the year. And blue whales are actually hopping

00:48:40.920 --> 00:48:45.580
around tracking these different regions of abundant

00:48:45.580 --> 00:48:48.420
zooplankton. So, they might spend some time up in

00:48:48.420 --> 00:48:51.740
Monterey Bay, and then when that season's over, they'll

00:48:51.740 --> 00:48:54.140
move down to the Sea of Cortez, they'll feed there for a

00:48:54.140 --> 00:48:56.640
while, and then they''ll move all the way down to the

00:48:56.640 --> 00:48:59.780
Costa Rica Dome and feed there. And so, having to

00:48:59.780 --> 00:49:02.940
follow this super abundant prey, because that's the only

00:49:02.940 --> 00:49:07.460
thing that occurs in sort of dense enough quantities

00:49:07.460 --> 00:49:12.020
to provide enough food for a huge whale like that, that's

00:49:12.020 --> 00:49:14.680
leading them to make these sort of really long distance

00:49:14.680 --> 00:49:17.880
movements. And so we thought to ourselves, you know,

00:49:17.880 --> 00:49:20.740
okay, is there something about the behavior or the

00:49:20.740 --> 00:49:24.080
feeding of manta rays that might be allowing them or

00:49:24.080 --> 00:49:28.760
causing them to stay in more restricted habitats? So,

00:49:28.760 --> 00:49:32.040
those tags that we put on, not only do they measure

00:49:32.040 --> 00:49:34.800
where mantas go, but they also measure vertical

00:49:34.800 --> 00:49:37.420
movements and diving behavior. And so what you're

00:49:37.420 --> 00:49:41.420
looking at here is the proportion of time that mantas are

00:49:41.420 --> 00:49:45.060
spending, that's the X-axis or left to right, in different

00:49:45.060 --> 00:49:50.240
depth bins, which is what the Y-axis, or top to bottom, is.

00:49:50.240 --> 00:49:53.800
And so you'll see in April, up on the top left, this is

00:49:53.860 --> 00:49:56.920
again from Mexico, in April the mantas are spending a

00:49:56.920 --> 00:50:00.220
lot of time up at the surface, a little bit of time sort of

00:50:00.220 --> 00:50:03.140
distributed throughout the water column, as well, and

00:50:03.140 --> 00:50:06.460
then as we move from April to May, June, July, August,

00:50:06.460 --> 00:50:10.000
and eventually September, you'll see this slow transition

00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:12.760
of mantas going from those surface waters down into

00:50:12.760 --> 00:50:16.460
much deeper waters. And what we think is happening is

00:50:16.460 --> 00:50:19.720
that the mantas are actually feeding down deep as

00:50:19.720 --> 00:50:22.000
opposed to at the surface and that they're actually

00:50:22.000 --> 00:50:25.700
changing what prey they're targeting based on where

00:50:25.700 --> 00:50:28.900
that prey occurs vertically throughout the year. And so

00:50:28.900 --> 00:50:31.820
in April maybe they're feeding on surface zooplantkon,

00:50:31.820 --> 00:50:34.800
and instead of moving, you know, hundreds of miles

00:50:34.800 --> 00:50:37.900
away when that surface zooplankton disappears, they

00:50:37.900 --> 00:50:41.140
can move to deeper depths and start taking advantage

00:50:41.140 --> 00:50:45.560
of a different prey source, you know, that might occur in

00:50:45.560 --> 00:50:47.720
September down deep, as opposed to in April at the

00:50:47.720 --> 00:50:51.580
surface. So, that's great, we can hypothesize about that

00:50:51.580 --> 00:50:57.080
all we want. Surface feeding is easy for us to observe,

00:50:57.080 --> 00:50:59.180
but some of those other behaviors like the deep water

00:50:59.180 --> 00:51:02.100
feeding, that's quite a bit harder for us to actually

00:51:02.100 --> 00:51:05.100
confirm whether or not it's happening. So, every now

00:51:05.100 --> 00:51:08.760
and again, we get super lucky, and one of our buddies

00:51:08.760 --> 00:51:12.000
happens to be in a submarine, and he's cruising around

00:51:12.000 --> 00:51:16.620
the islands at 150 meters or so in his submarine, and

00:51:16.620 --> 00:51:20.120
he happens to see a manta ray feeding on these super

00:51:20.120 --> 00:51:23.520
dense patches of zooplankton down deep, right? And so

00:51:23.520 --> 00:51:28.800
that is sort of the extent of our direct observations of

00:51:28.880 --> 00:51:31.580
this feeding behavior down deep, and I don't know about

00:51:31.580 --> 00:51:34.080
you guys, I don't have that many friends who are

00:51:34.080 --> 00:51:36.920
spending a lot of time in submersibles, so these sorts of

00:51:36.920 --> 00:51:39.800
observations are very few and far between. And it's

00:51:39.800 --> 00:51:42.940
hard for us to understand the ecology and the feeding

00:51:42.940 --> 00:51:46.540
behavior just based on that tag data, because basically

00:51:46.540 --> 00:51:49.200
we're just guessing, right? We can see where an animal

00:51:49.200 --> 00:51:52.460
goes, but we can't actually see what it was doing.

00:51:52.460 --> 00:51:56.800
And so that's why for the past two years or so, we've

00:51:56.800 --> 00:52:00.220
been working with the National Geographic Crittercam

00:52:00.220 --> 00:52:03.800
program to actually deploy cameras on mantas, and

00:52:03.800 --> 00:52:07.440
do a little spying to see what exactly they're doing at

00:52:07.440 --> 00:52:10.240
different depths and at different times of the year.

00:52:15.520 --> 00:52:19.560
So, the Crittercam program is super cool. These guys

00:52:19.560 --> 00:52:22.020
have put cameras on just about every animal you can

00:52:22.020 --> 00:52:25.820
imagine. So, they've put cameras on penguins down in

00:52:25.820 --> 00:52:28.140
the Antarctic, and you'll see they make these little

00:52:28.140 --> 00:52:30.900
backpacks for the penguins, and they've got a camera

00:52:30.900 --> 00:52:33.580
on their back. And this is easy because the penguins

00:52:33.580 --> 00:52:36.620
always come back to the same haul-out point. So, the

00:52:36.620 --> 00:52:39.480
Crittercam guys can put a camera on the penguin, off

00:52:39.480 --> 00:52:42.800
they go, and whether it's a few hours or a couple days

00:52:42.800 --> 00:52:45.680
later, they come back to the same spot, you can catch

00:52:45.680 --> 00:52:48.300
them again, take the camera off, and look at all the

00:52:48.300 --> 00:52:51.440
information that they recorded. You can see what they

00:52:51.440 --> 00:52:54.700
were doing, what they were feeding on, and so on.

00:52:54.700 --> 00:52:57.640
With sharks, it's a little bit tougher, but still possible.

00:52:57.640 --> 00:53:00.360
So, they have these clamps that they've designed, and

00:53:00.360 --> 00:53:03.220
that will stick onto the dorsal fin. So, it will clamp

00:53:03.220 --> 00:53:06.920
around the dorsal fin, it will stay on for a few hours,

00:53:06.920 --> 00:53:10.340
maybe a couple days, and then it will pop off when it's

00:53:10.340 --> 00:53:12.480
programmed, and then it floats to the surface, and

00:53:12.480 --> 00:53:16.160
it can be recovered. Now, mantas are a little bit harder

00:53:16.160 --> 00:53:20.080
because they're a giant, flat disc. So, we can't really put

00:53:20.080 --> 00:53:24.100
a backpack on them, they've got this tiny little dorsal fin

00:53:24.100 --> 00:53:27.100
down way at their back, so even if you could somehow

00:53:27.100 --> 00:53:29.660
clamp a camera on there, you wouldn't get a really good

00:53:29.660 --> 00:53:32.880
view, it would just be sort of this sea of black,

00:53:32.880 --> 00:53:35.360
their whole back, right? So, we spent a lot of time

00:53:35.360 --> 00:53:37.900
thinking about, okay, how are we going to actually

00:53:37.900 --> 00:53:41.080
attach one of these cameras to a manta? And we really

00:53:41.080 --> 00:53:44.620
didn't want to do the invasive methods like the tags,

00:53:44.620 --> 00:53:47.140
because we're always balancing how much information

00:53:47.140 --> 00:53:49.380
we're actually going to get versus the impact on the

00:53:49.380 --> 00:53:51.840
animal. And for deployments that were probably

00:53:51.840 --> 00:53:56.220
going to last, five six hours, maybe a day, we didn't want

00:53:56.220 --> 00:53:59.140
to put one of those little darts in an animal that's going

00:53:59.140 --> 00:54:02.200
to last for maybe a couple years just for a few hours of

00:54:02.200 --> 00:54:04.820
footage. So, we were scratching our heads and we had

00:54:04.820 --> 00:54:08.340
a few ideas, and Greg Marshall, the creator of the

00:54:08.340 --> 00:54:11.260
Crittercam program, happened to bring out some of

00:54:11.260 --> 00:54:14.920
these suction cups on our first expedition. And so they

00:54:14.920 --> 00:54:18.260
used these for Crittercam deployments on whales, and

00:54:18.260 --> 00:54:21.160
we said, hey what the hell, we'll give it a try, and sure

00:54:21.160 --> 00:54:26.700
enough, as you guys see here, these suction cups

00:54:26.700 --> 00:54:29.940
actually managed to stick onto the heads of the manta

00:54:29.940 --> 00:54:33.160
rays. And so they stick on there kind of like a third

00:54:33.160 --> 00:54:37.240
remora, so those two fishes that you see side by side

00:54:37.240 --> 00:54:39.900
are sucker fishes, they're pretty much on every manta

00:54:39.900 --> 00:54:42.620
that you see. And then we've got our little electronic

00:54:42.620 --> 00:54:46.000
remora, which is suctioned onto the head of the manta

00:54:46.000 --> 00:54:50.280
and recording cool information for us. So, one of our

00:54:50.280 --> 00:54:53.760
biggest problems was that mantas are actually so

00:54:53.800 --> 00:54:56.260
friendly at some of these sites that the only footage

00:54:56.260 --> 00:54:59.120
we were getting was just footage of us waving to the

00:54:59.120 --> 00:55:01.520
camera. So, they'd just hang out with for hours and

00:55:01.520 --> 00:55:04.660
hours and hours, and eventually we had to institute

00:55:04.680 --> 00:55:07.860
a rule that after we put a camera on a manta,

00:55:07.860 --> 00:55:10.320
everybody gets out of the water, hoping that the mantas

00:55:10.320 --> 00:55:12.740
then going to forget about us and go do something

00:55:12.740 --> 00:55:17.360
interesting like feed or socialize. And so we actually get

00:55:17.360 --> 00:55:22.320
a lot of this social behavior between different mantas.

00:55:22.320 --> 00:55:25.380
So, you know, we'll see males sort of starting to follow

00:55:25.380 --> 00:55:28.360
females, we're learning that a lot of this interaction

00:55:28.380 --> 00:55:32.060
happens off of the typical sites where we normally see

00:55:32.060 --> 00:55:34.280
these interactions, these social behaviors between

00:55:34.280 --> 00:55:37.140
mantas. And then we also get to see a little bit about

00:55:37.140 --> 00:55:39.860
how they move around in their habitats. So, we would

00:55:39.860 --> 00:55:43.820
see a lot of animals jumping from these rock piles,

00:55:43.820 --> 00:55:47.240
one rock pile across a big sea of sand to another rock

00:55:47.240 --> 00:55:50.380
pile, which we think is giving us a little bit of insight

00:55:50.380 --> 00:55:53.340
about navigation and how they find their way around.

00:55:53.340 --> 00:55:56.620
And then of course we have so many hours of just

00:55:56.620 --> 00:55:59.980
blue water, where the manta's going off, doing its thing,

00:55:59.980 --> 00:56:02.600
which our poor volunteers and interns have to sort

00:56:02.600 --> 00:56:07.180
through. So, I raise my glass to them for their hours

00:56:07.180 --> 00:56:10.980
of hard labor. One of our other problems was that the

00:56:10.980 --> 00:56:14.340
cameras weren't staying on very long. So, we started

00:56:14.340 --> 00:56:18.700
coming up with some engineering solutions to

00:56:18.720 --> 00:56:21.500
overcome that hurdle, and we decided to employ this

00:56:21.500 --> 00:56:25.120
active suction, where we can actually blast some air

00:56:25.120 --> 00:56:28.540
through a pump on top of the suction cup, like you see

00:56:28.540 --> 00:56:33.040
here, and that causes it to clamp down onto the manta.

00:56:33.040 --> 00:56:37.000
And so you can see that happening, if you watch closely,

00:56:37.000 --> 00:56:40.480
you can actually see the suction cup here actually

00:56:40.480 --> 00:56:43.480
sucking down onto the animal because of that active

00:56:43.480 --> 00:56:45.820
suction mechanism. So, that was really cool, that

00:56:46.000 --> 00:56:48.820
improved our retention times up to about six or seven

00:56:48.820 --> 00:56:53.040
hours, and we got, this for me is the most exciting

00:56:53.040 --> 00:56:55.100
thing that I saw the whole time through all of our

00:56:55.100 --> 00:56:58.160
footage. You guys missed it; you weren't paying

00:56:58.160 --> 00:57:01.940
attention. It's right here at the beginning. That's it, that's

00:57:01.940 --> 00:57:05.420
the cephalic fin opening, and now this is a manta

00:57:05.420 --> 00:57:07.900
swimming through a sea of zooplankton. So, this was

00:57:07.900 --> 00:57:10.660
our first observation of the mantas actually foraging

00:57:10.660 --> 00:57:14.360
at depth, which to you guys and to anybody else who's

00:57:14.360 --> 00:57:17.380
ever looked at this footage, is exceptionally boring,

00:57:17.380 --> 00:57:20.860
but for me was super super exciting. So, these have

00:57:20.860 --> 00:57:24.720
been giving us some insights into oceanic manta

00:57:24.720 --> 00:57:27.560
foraging behavior. They've helped confirm some of the

00:57:27.560 --> 00:57:30.980
hypotheses that we were developing based on the

00:57:30.980 --> 00:57:34.800
tag data. And then we've also started doing these

00:57:34.800 --> 00:57:37.880
Crittercam deployments on the reef mantas, and so this

00:57:37.880 --> 00:57:40.620
is much more exciting to watch,  our interns were much

00:57:40.620 --> 00:57:43.740
happier sorting through the reef manta data because

00:57:43.740 --> 00:57:46.360
these guys tend to travel in groups, which is actually

00:57:46.360 --> 00:57:48.420
something we didn't know before we started

00:57:48.420 --> 00:57:52.440
deploying these. So, we're seeing them courting off

00:57:52.440 --> 00:57:55.000
of the typical courtship sites, which is I was talking

00:57:55.000 --> 00:57:58.680
about that before, leading us to understand that

00:57:58.680 --> 00:58:02.180
they're actually courting for much longer periods.

00:58:02.240 --> 00:58:05.360
And then we also get much more exciting feeding

00:58:05.360 --> 00:58:08.220
behavior footage, so that's what you're seeing here.

00:58:08.220 --> 00:58:11.660
So, again, this is a reef manta also feeding at depth.

00:58:11.660 --> 00:58:14.360
All those little black dots that you see, those are little

00:58:14.360 --> 00:58:17.880
copepods, and he's here with his buddies feeding, which

00:58:17.880 --> 00:58:20.940
again is much more interesting to watch and also easy

00:58:20.940 --> 00:58:23.860
for us to confirm that they're actually feeding and not

00:58:23.860 --> 00:58:27.220
doing something else. So, these Crittercams are a

00:58:27.220 --> 00:58:30.740
really neat tool, they're giving us a lot of insights into

00:58:30.740 --> 00:58:34.240
behavior, whether it's feeding behavior, social behavior.

00:58:34.300 --> 00:58:37.360
And they're also a really great outreach tool for us.

00:58:37.460 --> 00:58:39.380
We've done some collaborations with National

00:58:39.380 --> 00:58:43.120
Geographic, posting these videos online. They draw a

00:58:43.120 --> 00:58:46.340
lot of people in because obviously this is pretty neat

00:58:46.340 --> 00:58:49.060
footage, and then that gives us a platform to start

00:58:49.060 --> 00:58:51.660
talking about some of the other issues, the conservation

00:58:51.660 --> 00:58:55.120
concerns, which is really what it all comes back to.

00:58:55.120 --> 00:58:59.020
And again, you know, this research that we're doing on

00:58:59.020 --> 00:59:03.180
the feeding behavior, the vertical habitat use, it's not

00:59:03.180 --> 00:59:07.420
just for fun, it's not just for learning about the ecology.

00:59:07.420 --> 00:59:09.640
I like to bring all of it back to conservation and

00:59:09.640 --> 00:59:13.420
management and understanding the different habitats

00:59:13.420 --> 00:59:16.580
that these animals are using and specifically what

00:59:16.580 --> 00:59:19.460
depths they're accessing in the water column and

00:59:19.460 --> 00:59:22.480
what's driving that. So, for example, you know, where

00:59:22.480 --> 00:59:25.220
food is available in different months and where those

00:59:25.220 --> 00:59:28.480
mantas might be in response to that food availability.

00:59:28.480 --> 00:59:30.860
Also, it helps us understand how susceptible these

00:59:30.860 --> 00:59:34.120
animals are going to be to different types of fishing gear.

00:59:34.120 --> 00:59:37.000
So, we're hoping that, you know, all of this information

00:59:37.000 --> 00:59:41.080
is going to help us come up with strategies to

00:59:41.080 --> 00:59:44.340
prevent bycatch. So, if we know, for example, that

00:59:44.340 --> 00:59:47.260
in the month of April mantas in a certain region are

00:59:47.260 --> 00:59:50.220
more likely to be up near the surface feeding on

00:59:50.220 --> 00:59:53.540
surface-associated zooplankton, that will also tell us

00:59:53.540 --> 00:59:56.660
that they're more likely to be caught in surface-set gill

00:59:56.660 --> 00:59:59.500
nets during that period, and maybe we can start thinking

00:59:59.500 --> 01:00:02.820
about ways to reduce the interactions between gill nets

01:00:02.820 --> 01:00:05.180
and mantas. And in other months, maybe when they're

01:00:05.180 --> 01:00:08.080
spending time deeper feeding on that deep water

01:00:08.080 --> 01:00:10.800
zooplankton, they're more likely to be caught up in

01:00:10.800 --> 01:00:14.180
midwater trawls or purse seines or what-have-you and

01:00:14.180 --> 01:00:16.560
again trying to use that information to mitigate the

01:00:16.560 --> 01:00:20.640
bycatch and prevent the bycatch. And for me, really all

01:00:20.640 --> 01:00:24.000
the work that I do is driven by understanding these

01:00:24.000 --> 01:00:26.480
animals better so that we can improve management of

01:00:26.480 --> 01:00:29.500
them. And that's why it's been a really cool opportunity

01:00:29.500 --> 01:00:33.420
for me as a Doctor Nancy Foster scholar to work with

01:00:33.420 --> 01:00:36.200
the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries to better

01:00:36.200 --> 01:00:39.400
understand how the sanctuary program is impacting

01:00:39.400 --> 01:00:42.700
manta populations here in the U.S. So, a lot of the work

01:00:42.700 --> 01:00:46.160
that I've done has been overseas, but we actually have

01:00:46.160 --> 01:00:49.620
a couple of places throughout the U.S. that have quite

01:00:49.620 --> 01:00:53.180
thriving manta populations. So, one of them is the

01:00:53.180 --> 01:00:57.240
Hawaiian Islands, and the Hawaiian Islands Humpback

01:00:57.240 --> 01:01:00.220
Whale Marine Sanctuary encompasses a large portion

01:01:00.220 --> 01:01:04.060
of that manta habitat. And then, if you can believe it, the

01:01:04.060 --> 01:01:07.100
Flower Garden Banks, which is off of Texas and

01:01:07.100 --> 01:01:11.880
Louisiana is also one of the sanctuaries that has the

01:01:11.880 --> 01:01:16.260
most regular or abundant manta sightings. And so

01:01:16.260 --> 01:01:19.420
that's the one I'm going to talk about and the sanctuary

01:01:19.420 --> 01:01:23.220
that I've been working with in the last couple of years.

01:01:23.220 --> 01:01:25.580
So, the Flower Garden Banks National Marine

01:01:25.580 --> 01:01:29.540
Sanctuary is situated in the northern Gulf of Mexico, so

01:01:29.540 --> 01:01:32.740
it's about a hundred miles due south of the border

01:01:32.740 --> 01:01:37.040
between Louisiana and Texas, and if any of you have

01:01:37.040 --> 01:01:40.620
ever been to the Gulf of Mexico, close to shore you get,

01:01:40.620 --> 01:01:44.680
you know, pretty brown water. The bottom for pretty

01:01:44.680 --> 01:01:48.140
much the entire continental shelf is this sort of muddy,

01:01:48.140 --> 01:01:51.620
sandy, sedimenty bottom habitat. So, there's not a whole

01:01:51.620 --> 01:01:55.120
lot going on there. And then there are a couple of what

01:01:55.120 --> 01:01:58.540
we call salt domes, so it's where a super-saline water

01:01:58.540 --> 01:02:02.320
has actually pushed hard bedrock out from that

01:02:02.320 --> 01:02:06.140
sediment layer and created a habitat that's really nice

01:02:06.140 --> 01:02:09.540
for corals to grow on, right? So, corals can't grow on a

01:02:09.540 --> 01:02:14.440
shifting sediment bottom, they need a hard substrate

01:02:14.440 --> 01:02:17.720
that they can grow on. And so these salt domes have

01:02:17.720 --> 01:02:21.040
provided a sort of amazing and unique habitat in the

01:02:21.040 --> 01:02:25.760
Gulf of Mexico for corals to grow on, and that habitat,

01:02:25.760 --> 01:02:29.800
for reasons that aren't yet clear to us, will actually bring

01:02:29.800 --> 01:02:33.900
manta rays in. So, there are frequent observations of

01:02:33.900 --> 01:02:38.160
mantas, this is a long term monitoring cruise that I did

01:02:38.160 --> 01:02:42.360
with the Flower Garden Banks sanctuary staff last year,

01:02:42.360 --> 01:02:44.760
and we had mantas cruising over our heads while we

01:02:44.760 --> 01:02:48.540
were collecting data on corals and so on. And what we're

01:02:48.540 --> 01:02:52.540
trying to do at the Flower Garden Banks is look at the same

01:02:52.540 --> 01:02:55.160
sort of connectivity and movement patterns that

01:02:55.160 --> 01:03:01.820
I've been looking at elsewhere to get an idea of how

01:03:01.820 --> 01:03:04.780
the sanctuary system is protecting mantas, if it's

01:03:04.780 --> 01:03:07.960
adequately protecting some of that critical habitat, and

01:03:07.960 --> 01:03:11.480
then, you know, how it can be designed to improve

01:03:11.480 --> 01:03:15.440
management of mantas in their habitat in that area. And

01:03:15.440 --> 01:03:18.280
so one of the really neat things that I was just left

01:03:18.280 --> 01:03:21.340
flabbergasted by on my first visit to Flower Garden

01:03:21.340 --> 01:03:25.480
Banks is that in these habitats in the sanctuary, there

01:03:25.480 --> 01:03:29.440
are a ton of these really tiny juvenile oceanic mantas.

01:03:29.440 --> 01:03:32.780
And so you're looking at Steve Giddings here, who was

01:03:32.780 --> 01:03:35.300
the former Flower Garden Banks sanctuary

01:03:35.300 --> 01:03:39.540
superintendent, and he's now the director of science for

01:03:39.540 --> 01:03:42.540
the sanctuary program, he's swimming behind a tiny

01:03:42.540 --> 01:03:44.900
manta that can't be more than about five feet across

01:03:44.900 --> 01:03:50.260
maximum. And sure enough, even in the last two trips

01:03:50.260 --> 01:03:52.500
that I've done there, we've frequently seen some of

01:03:52.500 --> 01:03:56.700
these small juvenile mantas, which I have never seen

01:03:56.700 --> 01:03:59.340
anywhere else in the world. And so, what we think is

01:03:59.340 --> 01:04:02.560
happening is that this habitat is probably important

01:04:02.560 --> 01:04:05.500
for some reason for the juvenile mantas in this

01:04:05.500 --> 01:04:09.680
population  in the Gulf of Mexico. And thinking about

01:04:09.680 --> 01:04:11.520
the movements that we looked at previously in

01:04:11.520 --> 01:04:15.240
Indonesia, which is on the left here, and how restricted

01:04:15.240 --> 01:04:18.300
they were to this spatial management marine protected

01:04:18.300 --> 01:04:22.220
area, what we're trying to understand is both what the

01:04:22.220 --> 01:04:25.200
importance of the habitat in Flower Garden Banks is

01:04:25.200 --> 01:04:28.540
to these juvenile mantas and the manta population

01:04:28.540 --> 01:04:33.060
overall and then also if the sanctuary is adequate and if

01:04:33.060 --> 01:04:37.740
it's doing a good job of protecting that population.

01:04:37.740 --> 01:04:42.040
So, that's sort of it for the work that I do. I wanted to

01:04:42.040 --> 01:04:45.060
share some educational resources with you guys, in

01:04:45.060 --> 01:04:48.100
case you want to take these and share them with your

01:04:48.100 --> 01:04:51.580
classrooms. So, the Flower Garden Banks National

01:04:51.580 --> 01:04:54.960
Marine Sanctuary actually has a really cool activity that

01:04:54.960 --> 01:04:58.760
teaches students about the spot patterns that manta

01:04:58.760 --> 01:05:02.900
rays have and some of the tagging that Flower Garden

01:05:02.900 --> 01:05:05.480
marine sanctuary has done in the past with mantas and

01:05:05.480 --> 01:05:07.880
how that information is being used to inform

01:05:07.880 --> 01:05:10.820
management. And then there are also lots of cool shark

01:05:10.820 --> 01:05:13.000
and ray videos from the Flower Garden Banks that you

01:05:13.000 --> 01:05:16.420
can share with your classrooms. And I'm actually at the

01:05:16.420 --> 01:05:21.340
moment coming up with a curriculum to teach you or

01:05:21.340 --> 01:05:26.160
your students about how we use those photo ID's to

01:05:26.160 --> 01:05:29.600
actually estimate population sizes, so stay tuned, and

01:05:29.600 --> 01:05:32.760
hopefully in the next six months to a year, we'll have a

01:05:32.760 --> 01:05:36.260
nice curriculum available for you on that. And then we

01:05:36.260 --> 01:05:39.440
have a ton of the Crittercam videos, which are quite

01:05:39.440 --> 01:05:41.820
exciting I think, which have been shared through

01:05:41.820 --> 01:05:45.640
National Geographic, and there's some cool educational

01:05:45.640 --> 01:05:48.340
tools in there and more information for students.

01:05:48.340 --> 01:05:52.420
And then I haven't gone into great detail about sort of

01:05:52.420 --> 01:05:54.400
the whole range of knowledge about mantas and

01:05:54.400 --> 01:05:57.820
mobulas. There's a ton of information on our MantaTrust

01:05:57.820 --> 01:06:00.720
website about that, general knowledge, and then of

01:06:00.720 --> 01:06:03.900
course, I don't know if we're going to have question and

01:06:03.900 --> 01:06:06.760
answer here, Claire, but if we do, I'm happy to answer

01:06:06.760 --> 01:06:09.540
any questions that you guys might have. And then to

01:06:09.540 --> 01:06:13.720
wrap it up...yeah? Okay cool, so we'll do that in a sec.

01:06:13.720 --> 01:06:17.060
A few conclusions: Hopefully, I have convinced you that

01:06:17.060 --> 01:06:20.180
manta rays are great, they're big, they're smart, they're

01:06:20.180 --> 01:06:23.320
super friendly and gregarious, and you know that has

01:06:23.320 --> 01:06:26.700
led to people loving these in-water interactions with

01:06:26.700 --> 01:06:30.060
mantas. But despite all that, there are still some really

01:06:30.060 --> 01:06:33.540
major knowledge gaps in their ecology and biology,

01:06:33.540 --> 01:06:36.900
which in some ways is hindering effective management

01:06:36.900 --> 01:06:39.300
and conservation of these animals. So, there's a lot for

01:06:39.300 --> 01:06:43.440
us still to learn. The work that I've been doing with many

01:06:43.440 --> 01:06:46.740
collaborators has taught us that the oceanic mantas

01:06:46.740 --> 01:06:49.900
are actually not nearly as migratory as we originally

01:06:49.900 --> 01:06:54.660
thought, and these isolated sub-populations are

01:06:54.660 --> 01:06:59.060
therefore vulnerable to exploitation, but there are also

01:06:59.060 --> 01:07:03.140
some really great pros that come out of those restricted

01:07:03.140 --> 01:07:07.160
ranges, which include national protection, local

01:07:07.160 --> 01:07:10.380
protection, and even marine protected areas having

01:07:10.380 --> 01:07:14.520
major impacts, positive impacts, on these populations.

01:07:14.520 --> 01:07:17.640
And we talked a little bit about how the diving and

01:07:17.640 --> 01:07:22.420
foraging behavior is probably influencing and causing

01:07:22.420 --> 01:07:25.220
that sort of restricted geographic range that's very

01:07:25.220 --> 01:07:27.420
different from some of those other big animals that we

01:07:27.420 --> 01:07:31.880
encounter. So, some thank you's, I've got a ton of people

01:07:31.880 --> 01:07:34.920
who work with me on this work, I can't thank all of

01:07:34.920 --> 01:07:37.440
them, there are too many of them. But I do just want to

01:07:37.440 --> 01:07:41.060
give a special thank you to the Flower Garden Banks

01:07:41.060 --> 01:07:44.000
National Marine Sanctuary staff, who are making the

01:07:44.000 --> 01:07:47.320
work that I'm currently doing there possible. So,

01:07:47.320 --> 01:07:51.100
big thank you to them. And then a lot of funders,

01:07:51.100 --> 01:07:54.720
including fellowships for me from the Office of National

01:07:54.720 --> 01:07:57.300
Marine Sanctuaries, the Doctor Nancy Foster

01:07:57.300 --> 01:08:00.360
Scholarship program. So, if you have any continuing

01:08:00.360 --> 01:08:03.920
education students, definitely point them towards that

01:08:03.920 --> 01:08:07.820
for graduate school opportunities and so forth. And I

01:08:07.820 --> 01:08:10.540
think that's it. Oh yeah, my lovely wife, who helped

01:08:10.540 --> 01:08:13.380
design many of those cool graphics, which I think

01:08:13.380 --> 01:08:16.940
do a good job of helping to share the information

01:08:16.940 --> 01:08:20.660
that we've been collecting, so thank you to Madeline.

01:08:20.660 --> 01:08:23.800
Any questions that you guys have I'm happy to answer.

01:08:24.040 --> 01:08:25.340
- (Claire Fackler speaking) Great, thank you, Josh. That

01:08:25.340 --> 01:08:27.940
was a super informative webinar. We are about eight

01:08:27.940 --> 01:08:30.460
minutes over the top of the hour, so we'll probably just

01:08:30.460 --> 01:08:32.740
take one or two quick questions and then I'll close out

01:08:32.740 --> 01:08:35.720
with a few of the closing slides. I did have questions

01:08:35.720 --> 01:08:37.960
come in throughout the entire presentation. I'm

01:08:37.960 --> 01:08:41.100
going to go ahead and unmute our first guest,

01:08:41.100 --> 01:08:44.980
Samantha, or sorry not Samantha, Sabrina Britt. Did I

01:08:44.980 --> 01:08:47.240
unmute the right person? Yes. Sabrina, do you want to

01:08:47.240 --> 01:08:49.000
go ahead and ask your question?

01:08:49.000 --> 01:08:50.560
- (Sabrina Britt speaking) Yeah, can you hear me okay?

01:08:50.560 --> 01:08:51.900
- Yeah, go, Sabrina.

01:08:51.900 --> 01:08:53.720
- (Sabrina Britt speaking) Okay, I was wondering how the

01:08:53.720 --> 01:08:57.120
manta ray's brain-to-body-mass ratio compare to that of

01:08:57.120 --> 01:08:58.660
whale sharks?

01:08:58.660 --> 01:09:01.720
- Yeah, good question. So, you're going to see a little bit

01:09:01.720 --> 01:09:04.580
of my bias towards manta rays here. So, whale sharks

01:09:04.580 --> 01:09:07.680
actually have a tiny brain-to-body-mass ratio

01:09:07.680 --> 01:09:11.140
compared to mantas. So, despite being an even bigger

01:09:11.140 --> 01:09:13.780
animal, they've actually got pretty small brains, whereas

01:09:13.780 --> 01:09:17.760
mantas have these enormous brains, which take up a

01:09:17.760 --> 01:09:22.980
pretty huge proportion of their body, actually. So, in that

01:09:22.980 --> 01:09:26.260
sense, we're pretty sure that mantas are quite a bit

01:09:26.260 --> 01:09:29.520
smarter than whale sharks, and also from the in-water

01:09:29.520 --> 01:09:32.840
interactions that you have with them, you know, mantas

01:09:32.840 --> 01:09:35.140
are much more curious, they'll come up and engage

01:09:35.140 --> 01:09:38.020
and interact with you, whereas pretty much all of the

01:09:38.020 --> 01:09:40.740
whale shark interactions that I've had, despite them

01:09:40.740 --> 01:09:44.500
being these enormous, gorgeous animals,  they don't pay

01:09:44.500 --> 01:09:47.700
much attention, they're kind of like big, swimming cows.

01:09:47.700 --> 01:09:49.800
They'll just go off and do their thing and ignore you

01:09:49.800 --> 01:09:54.100
altogether. So, personally I enjoy the interactions with

01:09:54.100 --> 01:09:56.580
mantas quite a bit, and I think a big part of that is

01:09:56.580 --> 01:09:59.560
because of that much larger brain-to-body-mass ratio.

01:10:01.200 --> 01:10:02.980
- (Sabrina Britt speaking) Great, thank you.

01:10:02.980 --> 01:10:04.960
- (Claire Fackler speaking) And then Aubra Denson, I'm

01:10:04.960 --> 01:10:06.620
going to go ahead and unmute you, if you want to ask

01:10:06.620 --> 01:10:09.400
your question...this might be our last question.

01:10:09.400 --> 01:10:11.620
- (Aubra Denson speaking) Hi, Josh. I wanted to know

01:10:11.620 --> 01:10:15.280
earlier, when the mantas were doing that train and they were

01:10:15.280 --> 01:10:19.160
following her when she was pregnant, do they like stay

01:10:19.160 --> 01:10:22.740
in the same area and wait for her to go have this baby,

01:10:22.740 --> 01:10:25.900
and if she picks one, do they just sit there and say,

01:10:25.900 --> 01:10:28.620
"Okay, I'm gonna wait here and mate with her?"

01:10:28.620 --> 01:10:32.440
- Yeah, good question. So, typically where we see the

01:10:32.440 --> 01:10:35.440
mating and the courtship behavior occur is on cleaning

01:10:35.440 --> 01:10:38.720
stations, which I didn't talk about. So, these guys will go

01:10:38.720 --> 01:10:41.320
off and, you know, spend a bunch of time offshore in

01:10:41.320 --> 01:10:44.140
these pelagic habitats and then they'll come in to

01:10:44.140 --> 01:10:47.420
coastal or reef habitats and they'll spend time getting

01:10:47.420 --> 01:10:50.520
parasites getting picked off of them. And they'll stay

01:10:50.520 --> 01:10:53.320
there for, you know, days, maybe even weeks, and so

01:10:53.320 --> 01:10:55.580
that's probably where the mating occurs for the most

01:10:55.580 --> 01:10:59.020
part, and so they'll be in this area around the cleaning

01:10:59.020 --> 01:11:03.880
stations often for a long time. And so, the female will go

01:11:03.880 --> 01:11:06.280
give birth and these mating trains, you know it's not

01:11:06.280 --> 01:11:09.320
always the same males with the same female, so they

01:11:09.320 --> 01:11:12.500
might happen over several weeks just repeated

01:11:12.540 --> 01:11:15.180
mating trains and courtship events leading up to the

01:11:15.180 --> 01:11:20.760
main event. And so, they'll hang out and try to mate with

01:11:20.760 --> 01:11:23.520
whoever they can probably over that period. And then

01:11:23.520 --> 01:11:26.520
once the male picks her female, or sorry once the

01:11:26.520 --> 01:11:29.380
female picks her male that she wants to mate with,

01:11:29.380 --> 01:11:31.820
at that point, she's probably weeded out a lot of the

01:11:31.820 --> 01:11:34.500
other males just literally by swimming away from them,

01:11:34.500 --> 01:11:36.460
and the one that can keep up with her is the one

01:11:36.460 --> 01:11:40.540
who's going to get to mate with her. But occasionally,

01:11:40.540 --> 01:11:42.600
there will be a couple other males there, like that one

01:11:42.600 --> 01:11:45.380
photo I showed, and they'll still try and jockey for an

01:11:45.380 --> 01:11:49.400
opportunity to mate, and you know even try to push off

01:11:49.400 --> 01:11:54.380
competing males. So, it's not aggressive or anything,

01:11:54.380 --> 01:11:58.140
but they don't go by quietly and let the other guy mate

01:11:58.140 --> 01:11:59.860
with her. They'll definitely still try.

01:11:59.860 --> 01:12:01.480
- (Aubra Denson speaking) Thank you.

01:12:01.480 --> 01:12:03.000
- Sure, yeah. Good question.

01:12:04.440 --> 01:12:06.040
- (Claire Fackler speaking) Awesome. Okay, well you

01:12:06.040 --> 01:12:08.020
know, I'm sorry, there were more questions.

01:12:08.020 --> 01:12:10.460
I know Wayne, Barb, Elizabeth, others of you had

01:12:10.460 --> 01:12:13.660
questions for Josh. We will, what I'll do is I have your

01:12:13.660 --> 01:12:15.920
contact information from registering for the webinar,

01:12:15.920 --> 01:12:18.620
and I will email those questions specifically to have

01:12:18.620 --> 01:12:22.480
Josh respond back via email. So, greatly appreciate

01:12:22.480 --> 01:12:25.720
everyone taking the time to be a part of our webinar

01:12:25.720 --> 01:12:31.500
series. I'll go ahead and wrestle back control, and just

01:12:31.500 --> 01:12:35.280
do a little wrap-up. I did want to let everybody

01:12:35.280 --> 01:12:37.480
know again that the recording of the webinar will

01:12:37.480 --> 01:12:40.220
be on our archive page. You'll get an email about it, so

01:12:40.220 --> 01:12:44.060
no need to dwell on that. Everyone also that participated

01:12:44.060 --> 01:12:47.220
will get a certificate of attendance for one hour of

01:12:47.220 --> 01:12:51.940
professional development, as you see here. And a really

01:12:51.940 --> 01:12:56.100
fun and new and exciting webinar that we're having

01:12:56.100 --> 01:12:58.560
next month, which will be October 18th, is going to be

01:12:58.560 --> 01:13:01.260
by my co-worker Alyssa Nally, and she's going to talk

01:13:01.260 --> 01:13:04.600
about a marine debris toolkit that's available for educators and

01:13:04.600 --> 01:13:07.820
is all online. So, you can join us for an in-depth look at

01:13:07.820 --> 01:13:12.320
this free educational tool and get your students doing

01:13:12.320 --> 01:13:17.040
some hands-on scientific monitoring. At the end of this

01:13:17.040 --> 01:13:19.940
webinar, when I close everything down, there will be

01:13:19.940 --> 01:13:22.920
a short four or five question evaluation that I highly

01:13:22.920 --> 01:13:26.180
recommend you take. It would be about one or two

01:13:26.180 --> 01:13:29.240
minutes of your time, so I know we went a bit over

01:13:29.240 --> 01:13:32.660
on today's presentation, but if you wouldn't mind

01:13:32.660 --> 01:13:34.440
taking those one or two minutes to answer those

01:13:34.440 --> 01:13:36.800
questions, we greatly value the feedback that we get

01:13:36.800 --> 01:13:39.860
from you. So, with that, thanks everyone for attending,

01:13:39.860 --> 01:13:43.260
thanks, Josh, for a great presentation on manta rays.

01:13:43.260 --> 01:13:47.940
I did create a list of educational resources  and videos

01:13:47.940 --> 01:13:51.000
and links that will be available on our archive page

01:13:51.000 --> 01:13:54.080
with direct links to those long URLs that Josh was

01:13:54.080 --> 01:13:57.760
sharing. So, with that, everyone have a great afternoon

01:13:57.760 --> 01:14:01.280
and this concludes today's webinar. Thank you.