Don't go away, Jonathan travels to the Maldives to investigate a Manta ray feeding frenzy!
Hi, I'm Jonathan Bird and welcome to my world!
Manta rays are among the ocean’s most majestic animals.
And while I have seen a few manta rays in my travels, I have never seen a manta feeding
frenzy—something that happens during a specific time of the year at a remote atoll in the
Indian ocean.
…So I have come here, to Baa Atoll in the Maldives, for the adventure of a lifetime!
The Maldives are a group of islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean, just south west
of India’s southern tip.
They are made up of thousands of coral atolls dotting the tropical blue water.
Here you can see everything from a traditional local fisherman in a rowboat with a single
fishing pole, to the hustle and bustle of water taxis around the capital city of Malé.
I’ll be exploring the Maldives aboard a luxury dive yacht, capable of traveling hundreds
of miles between atolls to find the best dive sites.
I’m brought aboard by a small boat called a “dhoni” that will cruise alongside us.
We will use the dhoni as our diving platform.
Soon we set sail for Baa atoll, and the captain drives the boat not with a gigantic steering
wheel, but a tiny joystick!
We leave the busy capital behind and cruise out into open water.
Although the boat has diesel engines, she gets a helping hand from favorable winds.
The next morning, our divemaster Shah gives us a short lecture on what to expect and how
we are going to find the mantas.
Once our gear is aboard the dhoni and the captain ready to head out, we climb aboard
and they shove off from the mother ship.
Time to go looking for manta rays!
We navigate between shallow reefs and sandy lagoons on our way to a place called Hanifaru
Bay.
There are 20 divers on this expedition and we're suited up and ready to go.
Shah is watching for mantas from the top deck.
We pass idyllic beaches on enchanting uninhabited islands.
Hanifaru Bay turns out to be not much more than a ring of coral reef surrounding a shallow,
sandy sea floor.
It’s not really a bay at all.
Shah doesn’t see anything resembling a manta, but we decide to go check it out anyway.
I suit up, keeping my expectations high.
Well, this is it, Hanifaru Bay.
Gets go see if we can find some manta rays!
The reefs around the outside of Hanifaru bay are gorgeous, filled with colorful corals
and schools of fish.
But the sandy bottom of the bay is fairly featureless.
And there are no mantas!
I wait for a while, looking up for manta shapes, but nothing swims over.
Mantas only come here when the tides are just right, because plankton accumulates in the
bay.
Well, no mantas.
You know, they tell me there can be like 50 or 100 mantas in this bay, but so far we haven’t
seen any.
I guess we’ll try again tomorrow.
As the sun sinks below the horizon, I can only wonder what tomorrow will bring.
I sure hope I didn’t come all this way for nothing!
The next morning, we’re off again to look for mantas.
Divemasters Shah and Schumi are on top of the boat scouring the water for shadows.
They want to find us the mantas just as badly as we want to see them.
We approach Hanifaru Bay with baited breath.
Schumi: There’s one, there’s one!
Look there!
Schumi’s keen eyesight has caught a shadow a few hundred yards away, in the middle of
Hanifaru Bay.
As we get closer, we realize there are at least a dozen mantas swimming around at the
surface.
Who knows where they were yesterday, but today, they’re here!
So, without wasting any time, we get ready to go into the water.
Some of our group is going to try snorkeling with them, which is probably a better way
to keep up.
To shoot steady footage, I really need to get down away from the surface waves, so I’m
going to use my scuba gear.
I hit the water and immediately, a manta turns and comes towards me, flying like a huge bird
with a ten-foot wingspan right over my head!
These strangely shaped animals are relatives of sharks.
They have no swim bladder and they sink if they stop swimming, so just like gigantic
underwater birds, they flap their wings to move and stay up off the bottom.
Even though their mouths are open wide, these animals present no threat to people.
They eat only plankton.
They catch the plankton by swimming with their mouths open wide and funneling extra water
in using two special fins in front of their mouth, called cephalic lobes.
Looking down into a manta’s throat, you can see the gills.
The water goes back out through the gills, but the plankton gets caught on comb-like
filters.
So a manta ray is like a big swimming strainer that filters out all the tiny planktonic bug-like
animals in the water.
As I watch them feed, I can see their massive gill slits underneath, where the water comes
back out.
While some mantas like to swim along the surface to feed, others find a good spot filled with
plankton and do barrel rolls, filtering the same cloud of plankton over and over until
they have gotten most of it.
This pair of mantas feeds in formation.
I have no idea if this helps them feed more effectively, if it’s just a coincidence,
or maybe they are pals.
The mantas don’t seem to mind me at all.
At first I thought that maybe they were so busy feeding that they didn’t notice much,
but sometimes it seems like they’re actually coming by on purpose to give me a look.
The water is filled with tiny silvery fish that are also feeding on the plankton.
They swim through my frame like a cloud of silver, dangerously near the mantas mouths,
but fast enough to avoid the hungry mantas.
As the sun gets lower in the sky, the tide is turning, and conditions for feeding become
less ideal.
The mantas start to wander off into the open ocean.
Woo hoo!
Man that is what we came for!
Dozens of manta rays all feeding at the same time with the tide going out.
Amazing to see with all their mouths wide open and zooming back and forth!
Woo hoo!
Man that was awesome!
After ten days at Hanifaru Bay, I only saw the feeding frenzy on three occasions when
conditions were just right.
But those magical few hours I spent in the water with the mantas were worth every bit
of the trouble in travelling all the way to the Maldives.
Once again I have been fortunate to witness a stunning performance of nature in the shallow
waters of the Blue World.