Ocean Giants #05 | SUMMER 2022 | RHINO RAYS IN MOZAMBIQUE | WHALE SHARKS | MANTAS IN FLORIDA by Marine Megafauna Foundation

#05

SUMMER 2022

Explore the Marine Megafauna Foundation’s pioneering conservation work

OCEAN GIANTS

RHINO RAYS IN MOZAMBIQUE

WHALE SHARKS OF MADAGASCAR

MANTA RAYS IN FLORIDA

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Mantahari Oceancare @mantahari

The Munich fashion start-up "Mantahari Oceancare" was founded in 2018 as a non-profit organization by Tim Noack. During his time as a diving guide in Komodo/Indonesia, one topic touched him above all: the pollution of the oceans by plastic waste. Thus a good portion of their profits is donated to MMF’s marine conservation projects in Indonesia. These projects focus on the protection of manta rays and other marine life and public education, scientific capacity building and government engagement through research and science to enable long-term environmental protection. The startup's product range includes apparel made from recycled PET bottles. To closely engage with the projects on the ground Mantahari regularly adopts individual manta rays (over 150 and counting) and has contributed > USD 30K in project funding.

W W W. M A N TA H A R I . C O M

If you want to help our oceans, now is the time. Join us in saving Earth’s most iconic marine wildlife. DR. ANDREA MARSHALL Co-founder, MMF

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Alex Radu Andrea Shum Diane Davidson Milena Scott Michael Ernestus Godknows Hwata Christopher Bie Elizabeth Stanko Elizabeth Blackford Julia Cano Julie Corbin Jesse Robbins

OUR OCEAN. OUR FUTURE.

SAVING OCEAN GIANTS FROM EXTINCTION.

COVER Sharkray in Mozambique. Photo by Dr. Andrea Marshall

Our mission is to save threatened marine life using pioneering research, education, and sustainable conservation solutions. Our objective is a world where marine life and humans thrive together.

CONTENT EDITOR Dr. Simon J Pierce

CREATIVE EDITOR & DESIGN Madeleine Pierce

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OC E AN GIANTS SUMMER 2022

CONTENTS

FEATURES

RHINO RAYS IN MOZAMBIQUE

WHALE SHARKS OF MADAGASCAR

MANTA RAYS IN FLORIDA

PG 07

PG 23

PG 43

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

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DIVE WITH MMF 26 FEB – 08 MAR 2024

Raja Ampat

Set sail on one of the finest vessels in Raja Ampat, the MV Coralia – recently voted the World’s Best Liveaboard. A classic wooden Phinisi, the MV Coralia was built specifically for dive expeditions. We’ll be visiting the top Raja dive regions from the spectacular Dampier Strait to Misool and, if weather permits, we’ll even make it up to the iconic Wayag archipelago. Your hosts will be the MMF founders, ‘Queen of Mantas’ Dr. Andrea Marshall and world-renowned whale shark biologist Dr. Simon Pierce.

LEARN MORE

marinemegafauna.org/trips

WELCOME BACK TO OCEAN GIANTS! For this summer issue, I’ve interviewed Andrea Marshall about the enigmatic wedgefish of Mozambique, Jessica Pate, to hear about her latest research on Florida manta rays, and Stella Diamant about founding a whale shark research and education project in northwest Madagascar. One thing I loved about all three chats was how they capture the determination and perseverance that’s needed to develop successful exploratory projects.

and long-suffering partners – who help and support us during this grind. It’s how we’re able to keep pushing through the tough times. There’s a minor change in format between the articles in this issue. I’d been using an AI transcription method for interviews, which was super helpful – but did entail a laborious re-write every time. It often got confused by the jargon we use, or other random words (I had to replace all the references to ‘Bolsheviks’ in the bull shark article a couple of issues ago). I’ve switched to a more organic transcript for Stella’s interview, which

Here at MMF, we pride ourselves on pioneering

I think came out well, so expect to see more of that

new techniques, documenting new critical habitats,

going forward.

and improving the conservation status of the world’s most endangered ocean animals. This is tough work, it takes a long time, and success is far from certain. A huge part of ‘winning’ is simply… not quitting. That, in turn, requires extreme stubbornness. Thanks to all the MMF funders, members, collaborators,

and volunteers – along with our families, friends,

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It’s also a pleasure to introduce you to MMF’s founding Ambassadors – three influential supporters of our work that have come onboard to help advise our team. See overleaf to meet them!

DR. SIMON PIERCE Co-founder, Principal Scientist

BECOME AN MMF MEMBER HELP SAVE OUR OCEAN GIANTS The Constellation is our MMF member community of ocean lovers, just like you, investing in the recovery of endangered marine wildlife. Includes exclusive members-only content. LEARN MORE

Go behind the scenes of our research, conservation, and education work, and help us protect the world’s most endangered ocean animals. DR. ANDREA MARSHALL Co-founder, Marine Megafauna Foundation

www.marinemegafauna.org/members

INTRODUCING MMF’S

Ambassadors We are welcoming long-time friends of MMF to help us scale our global conservation impact. It’s our pleasure to introduce you to our three founding ambassadors:

WESLEY PAUL Founder & Executive Chairman, NextGen Hydrogen. Wesley Paul is an investor and technologist active in a number of

manager including Global Head of Fixed Income & Debt, Foreign

businesses principally focused on sustainable energy, property

Exchange, Emerging Markets, Hedge Funds and finally as Global

technology, advanced pathogen detection and sanitisation,

Head of Investments where he had oversight over all products

healthcare and the food industry. He is a co-founder of NextGen

and assets under management across JPM’s wealth business. Wes

Hydrogen currently developing significant green hydrogen

is a keen conservationist and is critically focused on developing

projects around the world, Chairman of the Board of a world

technology solutions to reduce the impact of human activities on

leading pathogen sanitisation business and is CEO of his own

the planet and its endangered species.

property technology company. He was a previous Chairman of the Board of Marine Megafauna Foundation, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Armouries Museums in the UK, a member of the Advisory Boards of The Royal United Services Institute, University of Durham Global Security Institute and has held a number of other Board seats across a range of companies, charities and other institutions in different industrial sectors. He is currently working with a leading UK university to launch a new medical school and a human centric artificial intelligence initiative. Wes was previously a Managing Director at J.P. Morgan & Co. based out of London and New York where he worked for 25 years and held a variety of senior management positions after a successful career as a World No.1 ranked portfolio

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“I am delighted to rejoin Andrea and Simon at the Marine Megafauna Foundation as an Ambassador to the charity. The brilliant research work that MMF performs around the world is key to understanding how we are impacting our marine environments and acts as an important source of information for critical conservation work. As someone who now spends most of my time developing ESG solutions to the complex and convergent challenges that humanity faces across all environments the MMF team have my full support and I am excited to help them to support their activities and increase their impact even further.”

MMF AMBASSADORS

MARC GIRARD Marc was born and raised in Geneva, Switzerland. He studied finance at the University of Geneva and worked in banking for 13 years before he became an independent portfolio manager in 2000. His first diving experience was in 1971 and from that moment he was hooked on the marine environment. Marc regularly travels and dives with his family around the world.

“I first met Andrea and learned about MMF in 2014 during a diving trip in Mozambique. Instantly convinced by their mission and values, I was impressed by the professionalism with which Andrea leads her team. Sharing further diving experiences with Andrea, I could witness the contagious passion she shows in every minute of her MMF life. This passion combined with the effort she invests in educating the different communities around her makes me confident that the creatures we love are under good protection.”

TIFFANY SCHAUER Founder & Executive Director, Our Children’s Earth Foundation Tiffany founded OCE in 1998 after many years in various

polluting industries can influence the decision-making process

environmental justice and litigation positions specializing in

without risking the wrath of public opposition. The form of the

enforcement and compliance. In addition to her private sector

threat is as basic as it is destructive — our environmental laws

attorney experience with Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, which

simply are not being enforced adequately to ensure public safety

represented industry in environmental litigation, she was

and basic environmental protections. Since 1998, Tiffany has led

appointed to the Hearing Board of the Bay Area Air Quality

OCE to enforce some of the largest environmental law violation

Management District (BAAQMD). Prior to her work in the Bay

actions in the United States.

Area, Tiffany worked at the Federal Environmental Protection

Over the past 10 years, Tiffany has expanded OCE’s efforts

Agency in Washington, DC in a variety of key roles. She earned

beyond regulatory citizen enforcement to include communicating

her J.D. from Catholic University in Washington, DC. and her B.A.

the issues of government corruption, abuse of power, and

from San Diego State University. Tiffany is admitted to the State

needed transparency by addressing these issues in documentary

Bars of California, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia.

film. Tiffany spearheaded the initiative to bring OCE’s message

Tiffany served in various environmental regulatory roles prior to

to the storytelling genre of film through collaborating on many

founding OCE in 1998. Ms. Schauer’s varied positions, including

breakthrough documentaries including, Total Denial, Garbage

serving as an enforcement attorney at the Environmental Protection

Dreams, Island President, The C Word, Death by Design, How to

Agency, working as a Senior Attorney at a major environmental

Change the World, Sempre Fi, Last Animals, and Youth v. Gov.

law firm, and adjudicating Clean Air Act permit disputes at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District Hearing Board. During the course of her career, she discovered that the attacks on environmental regulatory standards and enforcement program funding decisions are not occurring in statehouses and legislative sessions, where the glare of public attention would be too great. Instead, the attacks most often occur in bureaucratic back rooms, out of the public eye, in obscure government departments where

“Our earth’s marine species and marine habitats are critically important, and extremely fragile. MMF’s relentless research, breakthrough peer-reviewed publications, community advocacy, and international coordination, have been critical in establishing the baseline science needed to safeguard our marine giants and the last truly wild places in our oceans. I see MMF as one of the world’s most fearless, effective and financially efficient marine science organizations of our time.”

UPDATES Dr. Chris Rohner led a study on the diving behavior of marlin, and their high exposure to commercial fisheries.

Dr. Steph Venables documented new sightings of the little-known ornate eagle ray in the Bazaruto Archipelago.

Dr. Elitza Germanov published a major paper on the manta rays of Komodo National Park, Indonesia.

MMF scientists co-authored an important new study on the global ship strike risk to whale sharks.

FOLLOW OUR CONSERVATION WORK Marine Megafauna Marine Megafauna MMF SE Asia MMF Americas

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

RHINO RAYS

in Mozambique

In conversation with

DR. ANDREA MARSHALL

(previous) Andrea releasing a tagged bottlenose wedgefish. (left) The unique sharkray, or bowmouth guitarfish. (below) Bottlenose wedgefish on a Mozambican reef.

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RHINO RAYS IN MOZAMBIQUE

in conversation with DR. ANDREA MARSHALL

Endangered or Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. One of the groups that we’ve been spending our attention

DR. ANDREA MARSHALL IS A FOUNDER AND PRINCIPAL SCIENTIST AT MMF, where she leads the global manta ray research and conservation program. In recent years, she has also started a project on some lesser-known, but even more endangered ocean species – the rhino rays of Mozambique.

- Simon Pierce

on is the wedgefish. A lot of people aren’t familiar with them. In Southern Africa, wedgefish are generally known as sand sharks. I can understand why people call them that: the front end looks like a ray, but the back end looks very much like a shark, and they spent a lot of time over the sand. Confusing things even further, one species is broadly known as the sharkray, or bowmouth guitarfish. Those are really unique and cool animals, with awesome spikes all over them, and they do look like weird sharks too. Rays and sharks are related, but there are a few characteristics that separate the two groups. All rays have their gills on the underside of their head, but that’s not super obvious to most people. A very visible distinction is that all rays have their pectoral fins, the big fins on the side of the body, fused into their heads. The wedgefish got their name because the pectoral fins join the head to form a wedge, like a slice of pie.

WHAT IS A RHINO RAY?

There’s a subfield in conservation now, referred to as ‘conservation marketing’. It focuses on how people perceive

I’ve been called an ‘obsessive specieologist’ for many years,

animals and their need for conservation, and how marketing

as I’ve been super focused on manta and devil rays. But,

techniques can be used to draw attention to the species that

while they’re fabulous of course, I’ve always been intrigued

need more help. With all the confusion surrounding this group,

by other species as well. I’ve been working in Mozambique

we’ve updated their collective name to be ‘rhino rays’. People

for the past 20 years, and we see many animals that are not

know about rhinos, and they know they need conservation

being studied, but we know that they’re in significant trouble

efforts to ensure they survive. We can borrow from that

on a global level. It’s hard not to want to learn a bit more,

awareness to help these awesome rays too. Sharkrays also

and to contribute where we can.

kind of look like a fishy rhino.

I’m still a ray girl. A lot of the species that I’m focusing

So the overall group we’re working on is called rhino rays,

time and energy on are rays. At the moment, I’m focused on

and our specific focus is on the wedgefish species that are

the species found in Mozambique that are listed as either

found in Mozambique.

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

An entangled wedgefish in Mozambique (subsequently released).

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ENDANGERED SPECIES The rhino rays are a tricky group to work with, so they haven’t been a major research focus until the past few years. For one thing, many of the species look quite similar, or have been poorly described, so there’s been confusion about how many species actually exist, and where they’re found. Ray research starts with taxonomy first, as you always have to figure out who you’re looking at, and that’s been a challenge with these animals. People are scrambling to study rhino rays across the world now, though, as it’s become clear that huge numbers are being caught in fisheries. Fishing pressure is the largest threat to most sharks and rays, and that’s absolutely the case for wedgefish as well. They’re being targeted for their incredible fins – both their large first and second dorsal fins, even the tail fin is big. Although they’re a ray, their fins look like shark fins, and they’re sold in the global shark fin trade where they’re worth a lot of money.

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

RHINO RAYS IN MOZAMBIQUE

I badly wanted to work on the group though, and we knew there were at least some around, so we decided to really go looking for them.

Whether people were looking at fish markets in Indonesia, India, or the Middle East, they were seeing these animals brought in for export. I’ve heard that they’re actually the most expensive of any shark or ray, with their fins being sold for almost $1,000 per kg in Asia. There’s an enormous amount of money in fishing for these animals. In addition, they’re awkwardly shaped – they have the wedge-shaped head, and large dorsal and caudal fins, which makes them vulnerable to being caught accidentally in coastal net fisheries. Because they’re so valuable, they’re retained, even though they’re not the target. Rhino rays are also suffering from the loss or degradation of their coastal habitats. We’re still trying to figure out their specific habitat preferences on a species-by-species basis but, generally speaking, they like shallow waters. The wedgefish seem to be using shallow reef environments a lot, and they’re also using sandflats, bays, river mouths, and potentially some mangrove areas. All of these areas are under threat from coastal development and can be disrupted by human activities. Like most sharks and rays, wedgefish have very conservative life histories. They just can’t withstand all the threats that we’re throwing at them right now. There are multiple focus areas with this group – we have to resolve their taxonomy, we have to get a better handle on the fisheries catch, and we have to understand their habitat preferences and lifestyles so we can actually protect the wild populations.

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FIRST, FIND YOUR RAY These rays are elusive. First, we had to find them. We’ve dived a lot in Mozambique without seeing many wedgefish and, when we did, it seemed quite random. I badly wanted to work on the group though, and we knew there were at least some around, so we decided to really go looking for them. Since we weren’t often seeing the rays while diving on the reefs, we knew that they must prefer other habitats. We also knew that, down in South Africa, a lot of fishermen target wedgefish, because they apparently put up a really good fight, and they’re really interesting and odd animals to catch too. These fishers often catch wedgefish off sandy beaches and spits. We don’t really dive these areas, because there’s not much there. Aerial surveillance seemed like the fastest way to cover these habitats. My husband Janneman is a pilot. He does a lot of flying for us, and he’s started using drones more over the years too. We started doing both flights and drone surveys over these areas and started seeing wedgefish quite often. We expanded the search even more, through bays and estuaries, around the mangroves, all these places that we don’t explore while diving. We’ve really gone out looking for these animals. Working out their habitat preferences has been a slow process, but it’s actually helped us a lot because it’s given us a much broader perspective of what’s going on overall. We’ve

(right) Janneman Conradie flying an aerial survey over Bazaruto. (below) Wedgefish and whiprays in the shallows of Bazaruto.

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

RHINO RAYS IN MOZAMBIQUE

(below) Janneman filming a sharkray, with accompanying golden trevally.

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RHINO RAYS IN MOZAMBIQUE

We’ve been really biased towards reef species, because those are the areas we knew, whereas the wedgefish have forced us to look in these other places that we hadn’t focused on before.

been really biased towards reef species, because those are

fast, so we might not be able to go that route either. External

the areas we knew, whereas the wedgefish have forced us to

marker tags are a common identification method for similar-

look in these other places that we hadn’t focused on before.

looking fish, but we already know they have a high shedding

We started by collecting identification photos of each ray. All the local species have some white spots on them, so we

rate. It’s all a bit tricky. Compounding the challenge, wedgefish are also really shy.

started thinking through the relevant questions: are the spot

That makes them tricky to work with. They’re not like manta

patterns different enough to distinguish individuals and, if

rays or whale sharks, which are pretty accommodating. These

they are, what’s the best area on the body to standardize the

guys swim fast, and they don’t like being approached by

photos? On manta rays we use the belly, whereas with whale

divers. We’ve gotten good now at stalking across the bottom

sharks we use the left side, so we were trying to work out the

to get close to them while they’re cleaning. If I control my

best area to use with wedgefish.

bubbles and inch my way across the sand, I can get a bit

It’s not just about checking where the spot pattern is the most unique, it’s also about using the area from which we can get

closer and have a look at them. As I said before, the taxonomy of this group has not been

the largest number of high-quality photos. Especially as it’s

fully resolved, so an important starting point was to collect

good to factor in the potential for citizen science contributions

genetic samples, by sneaking close to the wedgefish to get a

– Janneman and I are good at stalking the rays now, but it’s

little skin sample. I thought that, if that worked, it would give us

really hard for less experienced divers to get close. Then, the

hope that we could proceed to in-water tagging. It did work,

biggest question with photo-identification is always ‘are their

but it was really hard. We were able to do it though, and we

patterns consistent over time?’ Do the spots change as the

deployed some external acoustic tags on sharkrays. It was

animal grows, or does the skin pigment darken and make the

really exciting to tag them but, overall, we could see it was

spots hard to distinguish?

going to be difficult.

The jury is still out on that. Many of the wedgefish we see

They can also get really cheeky. I remember talking to

are almost black, so they might indeed get darker over time.

someone from an aquarium once, years ago, who told us

Photo-identification is a great way to track individual sharks

that their sharkrays would headbutt them if they didn’t get

and rays over long time periods, so we’re hoping that we can

fed first. We’ve seen something similar over here, in the wild.

use photos to monitor individuals, but we’re not sure yet.

Not just the sharkrays, but the wedgefish too, they’ll actually

A lot of the individual wedgefish have scars, too, which

charge us. That can be pretty intimidating. Even my husband,

people have proposed as an identification tool. The challenge

who’s well over six feet tall, got smashed into the reef by one.

there is that wedgefish, like most elasmobranchs, have

He was busy filming, and this wedgefish decided to ram him

extraordinary wound-healing ability. We’ve seen some of the

straight into a coral head. They’re a species to be reckoned

photo-identified wedgefish recover from injuries surprisingly

with, for sure. The name rhino ray really does suit them.

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

RHINO RAYS IN MOZAMBIQUE

DEVELOPING RESEARCH TECHNIQUES With wedgefish being so difficult to work with, it’s not surprising that there’s been little field research done with the group previously. As we worked to develop the project, we realized that – while I knew we could do it – it was going to be really hard to work with them underwater. It would just take a really long time. And these animals don’t have a long time. I don’t want to take the next 15 years to tag the animals; we want to have some solid results in 2–3 years, not decades from now. We had to have a conversation about strategy. MMF has generally focused on in-water research, as species like manta rays and whale sharks lend themselves well to external tagging. ‘Fishing science’, where we catch the animal and use internal tags, is a big departure from that previous work, and I’m not much of a fisher myself. But we thought that, if we’re going to make this work, we should try it. There are big advantages to that approach, too. When you catch an animal, you can use internal tags in the body cavity, which have a much longer lifespan, and collect blood samples and other data. So I thought, well, we’re gonna have to learn how to fish. I was really intimidated by that though, so we were super excited to be able to collaborate with Dr. Ryan Daly and Dr. JD Filmalter from South Africa, who are both incredible fishing scientists and very good friends. They came up to Bazaruto and gave us some lessons on how to catch these animals and work with them. We started with beach fishing, like the South African anglers do. I was surprised to find that wedgefish are reasonably easy to hook. There’s specific bait that you can use, and specific places you can go. But the thing is, they fight really hard, and really, fishing for science, we don’t want the animal to exert itself. I want to get things done as fast as possible. I didn’t want to release them in an exhausted state. So we did catch a couple, so we could investigate that method, but I still thought – there’s got to be a better way. Fishing is also hard, by the way. It’s not easy. I mean, we’re diving all day, then the fishing was mostly at night. We were going to fish at 10 pm, getting home at 3 am. And I’m thinking,

OC E AN GIANTS SUMMER 2022

stuff this, this is not a solid life choice. I just wanted to be underwater. And the guys were encouraging, “You’re doing a great job, carry on”. But I was determined to figure out how to get back underwater. Ryan and Janneman were thinking about it, and Ryan said, “you know, you could probably hook them underwater.” And it piqued our interest. We decided that we’d create this really long pole with a little hook on the end of it. We’d go down to the dive site, sneak up on the wedgefish, and hook them in the front part of their pectoral fin. When we found a wedgefish, though, we could be very choosy about which individual we actually caught. When you’re fishing, you can put their favorite bait on the end of a hook, but you don’t know what you’ll catch. If you’re targeting large rays, you may catch a lot of small ones before you get that large one. If you’re targeting females, you don’t know what sex you’re going to get. Whereas when you’re in water, you can select the individual that you want, and that’s exactly what we’re going for. We really want to select very specific sized individuals, and to have similar numbers of males and females in the study. I actually found it to be so much better than fishing for the animals. Once they realized they weren’t getting away, they relaxed, and we were able to put them into tonic immobility really quickly. We could bring them straight up to the boat, then we could either do quick surgery to implant an acoustic tag or affix a satellite tag on their dorsal fin. In less than 10 minutes, they’re back doing their thing where we’d caught them. Because we’re set up to dive, we could check how they recovered following release, watch them swim away, and feel really good about it. I’m really excited that we worked through the options and arrived at the technique that I feel most comfortable with. I think some people assume that biologists just whack tags on, that we’re just interested in data. And that’s not true at all. I think, especially at MMF, we care really deeply about these animals. It’s incredibly important to learn, to try different techniques, and try different equipment, until we feel most comfortable with how we’re tagging these animals.

RHINO RAYS IN MOZAMBIQUE

Andrea photo-identifying wedgefish.

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

Wedgefish and divers on a deeper reef.

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We have to protect the animals as they’re swimming from site to site, not just point A and point B. Some of these migratory pathways can look like open, seemingly barren open ocean areas. I think that, in the next couple of decades, we’re going to learn that we’ve been overlooking a lot of important movement corridors.

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

Wedgefish swimming overhead.

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RHINO RAYS IN MOZAMBIQUE

THE IMPORTANCE OF MOZAMBIQUE We’re getting amazing data back from the acoustic tags already, which shows that we’re placing the receivers in the right areas. We’ve obviously identified critical habitats, because we’re seeing really high residency. The animals are using those areas a lot. That said, there’s also a lot of movement between the different habitats and areas that we’ve identified. We won’t have covered their whole home range with our listening station array, of course, so we can get to work filling in those gaps over time. That’s where the satellite tags come in – as we get those results back, it might show us that another area along the coast is important to them, so we can focus more research there. Telemetry really opens up the door. It gives us much more information. I’m really pleased with how it’s going, even though the project has only been underway for about two years now. Going forward, we can monitor these areas over long periods of time, and use that information for management. Some of the critical habitats that we’ve identified actually sit just outside the boundary of the protected areas, parks, and sanctuaries that we’re working with. That provides great justification for

largely because they’re so hard to work in. We have really good habitat diversity in Mozambique, lots of sandy bays, flats, tidal zones, and mangroves, that the wedgefish like to live in. We do have dugongs in Mozambique, but they’re now found in a very limited area, and we haven’t really had another charismatic poster species for these important habitats, like seagrass beds, that can help to justify their protection. It seems from our preliminary work that wedgefish, especially the juveniles, spend a lot of time in seagrass beds. Because these fish are Critically Endangered, that provides us with a clear rationale for pushing for more protection for their habitats. That’s really good news for all the animals that share these areas. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I think that Southern Africa is going to turn out to be a global hotspot for rhino rays. Not just in terms of the numbers that we have, but because of the species diversity here. We’re only just getting started with this work, and I’m very proud to be helping to drive that forward with our field research in Mozambique. I think we’re going to really help tell the story of African wedgefishes over the next 5–10 years.

extending those boundaries out to cover these habitats, so the managers are really excited to see the new data pouring in. We’re documenting these reefs and other habitats that are obviously important for the rhino rays, including important cleaning stations and aggregation areas. I think that we’re starting to identify the pathways that a lot of these megafauna species are using to move between these areas, too. I think those are going to be equally as important. We have to protect the animals as they’re swimming from site to site, not just point A and point B. Some of these migratory pathways can look like open, seemingly barren open ocean areas. I think that, in the next couple of decades, we’re going to learn that we’ve been overlooking a lot of important movement corridors. Rhino rays are really good ambassadors for all these habitats that have been overlooked by a lot of scientists and managers,

Watch the full conversation with Andrea!

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

WHALE SHAR

of Madagascar

RKS

In conversation with

STELLA DIAMANT

(previous) Madagascar Whale Shark Project volunteer photoidentifying a whale shark. (left) School in Nosy Be. (below) Stella and whale shark off Nosy Be.

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WHALE SHARKS OF MADAGASCAR

in conversation with STELLA DIAMANT

After that, I went on to do my master’s in ecology and

STELLA DIAMANT IS THE FOUNDER OF THE MADAGASCAR WHALE SHARK PROJECT, WHICH HAS BECOME A MAJOR RESEARCH, EDUCATION, and conservation program based on Nosy Be in northwestern Madagascar. Stella joined us for a season at Mafia Island in Tanzania back in 2015, and we’ve been collaborating with her and the MWSP team ever since. I talked to her while she was traveling through Mexico.

- Simon Pierce

conservation. I always wanted to go back and participate in developing marine conservation over there. So it was always on the back of my mind, and then in between two jobs – I worked in marine pollution at the time, studying marine plastics – there was a brief break between contracts. I decided to go back to Madagascar and see if there was something I could do, or participate in. Completely by chance, I ended up on a touristic boat trip in the area where I work now. That’s where I saw my first whale shark ever. I was amazed by how beautiful they are, and also that no one was really doing anything with them. So I started asking questions and sending emails and that’s, I think, when we first got in touch. Yeah. It really surprises people that there isn’t more known about even these iconic species, or amazing places like Madagascar. When you started there, it really wasn’t on the radar as a whale shark hotspot, was it?

SP. I’ll start at the beginning. You’re from Belgium; what got you over to Madagascar?

No. Well, I looked into it and I didn’t find much. Rachel

SD. Initially, it was completely by chance. I first went to

earlier, and there was a short paper summarizing anecdotal

Madagascar as part of a volunteer program run by WWF in

reports from Madagascar. I remember contacting other

2011. They have a program that offers you an experience as a

people in whale shark science, who said, ‘Well, if there were

volunteer on one of their projects. It was just after I finished my

whale sharks, we’d know about it.’

bachelor’s in biological sciences, and I sent in an application because I wanted some field experience in conservation. I never really thought I would end up in Madagascar, but

Graham from MarAlliance had done research a few years

Locally, there were a few operators running tours, and actually the operator we work with now, Baleines Rand’eau, has been active since about the same time. It wasn’t really

I did. I was 21 then, and it was a very intense experience.

consistent sightings or anything though. Thanks to the science,

Far away and remote. I was blown away by how kind the

we know now there are more than 400 whale sharks at Nosy

people were and, equally, how beautiful the country was.

Be, but initially they all thought they were seeing the same

There was so much to do, so much work needed, especially in

sharks over and over. They were trying to recognize them by

marine conservation. That’s also when I realized that marine

scars, but that was difficult with so many sharks.

conservation is a field.

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

I was super surprised myself. I was a Facebook friend of Jacques Vieira, who was working over there as a diver, and he’d sent me occasional pictures. It must have been pretty amazing when you first realized that there were actually a lot of sharks. Yeah. So initially in 2015, while I was on Mafia Island with you guys, the Baleines Rand’eau team was collecting whale shark data for us opportunistically. We actually presented that data in Qatar at the International Whale Shark Conference in 2016. In just one season, they got more than 100 sightings. They were quite surprised themselves. I think that result was what triggered my interest even more, to actually obtain funding to go there for a full season myself, to start a dedicated effort to collect standardized data. You’ve put in a huge amount of field effort over there, going out pretty much every day for months at a time, right? I was counting the other day. I think I’ve done maybe 700 trips now. So 700 days. A couple of years’ worth of whale sharking. It’s always different, and that’s what I love about this job and this career. You never know what is going to happen at sea, which shark you’re going to see. So often we get incredible days out, with amazing surprises and other animals, it’s always exciting. You never get bored by it.

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Aerial view of Nosy Tanikely, with Nosy Be in background.

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WHALE SHARKS OF MADAGASCAR

No, definitely not. So, how do you go about researching the whale sharks over there?

You’ve identified over 400 sharks, but a lot of those, you’ve only really seen in one season, right?

The main thing we do, which is pretty standard across the

Yeah. I think it’s about a third of the sharks we’ve seen in more

world now, is photo-identification. These days, we use

than one season. Most sharks are just passing through. In the

volunteers a lot; we spend a few days training them, and

2021 season though, we’d seen most of the sharks before. So I

then deploy them daily on different tourism boats. That’s what

think we’re slowly getting to know most of the sharks.

we’ve been doing over the last few years, and it’s working really well. Even though the boats communicate with each other, they usually follow different routes, and can all see different whale sharks. For the first two years, I was pretty much on my own. I was collecting good data, but it was still only one boat’s worth of tracks. Now we get data from seven boats some days, so we get a lot more coverage of a big search area. We’ve recently

They keep coming back, even after swimming far away. So there must be a good reason for them to come back. I think we’ve decided it’s the food.

now know how to take photo-IDs, and the divers will also take

Indeed. Madagascar’s quite unique in terms of what the sharks are doing.

photos when they’re out.

I’m realizing that more and more as I talk to other researchers.

started working with other operators too, so most of the guides

We also satellite-tracked a few whale sharks back in 2016,

It’s really unique. We don’t actually look for sharks – we look

and have collected biopsy samples that, thanks to COVID, are

for bait balls at the surface, these boils of activity. You’ll see

still stuck in Madagascar in a fridge somewhere. We’re also

all these birds, specifically terns, diving down to catch baitfish.

planning to deploy an acoustic array to look at the fine-scale

Then, at the same time, there’s a lot of bonitos, small tuna,

distribution of whale sharks.

coming up from underneath to trap the little baitfish against the

So that’s the bulk of what we do. We recently published a paper that summarized the past five years of photo-ID work,

surface. Amongst all this really intense activity, usually right in the

from 2015 to 2019. We identified more than 400 whale

middle of it, there’ll be a whale shark vertical feeding. Usually

sharks over that time. I never thought we’d reach that number.

just one, rarely a few more. The sharks are scattered around

I’m really proud that, using non-invasive science, we could get

the bay, all with their individual little baitfish restaurant. We can

there.

easily spot them from afar thanks to the birds flying around and

The satellite tracks ended up being really cool too.

the splashing of the tunas. I know there’s similar baitball activity

Really cool. One shark swam 7,000 km in total, and we

Ningaloo, but it’s still very unique.

saw him again afterwards. He went all the way down to the southern tip of Madagascar, then the tag stopped transmitting, and he came back to Nosy Be a year later.

With the satellite tracks, as you mentioned, I think it was six out of the eight sharks that turned up again in more recent seasons, right? So it’s a super important area to these whale sharks.

OC E AN GIANTS SUMMER 2022

in Djibouti and Honduras, and there was a recent paper from The other thing is the blue water. I didn’t realize how special that was until recently, but it’s incredibly blue water. It’s really nice to see whale sharks in blue water.

(right) Stella entering data in the MWSP office. (below) Stella photoidentifying a whale shark.

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

I think we mentioned it in the paper last year, an idea that Steve Fox from Utila in Honduras first put into my head – that the whale sharks might hear the tuna jumping and bird activity and come up to the surface. That’s always stuck with me as a really interesting idea.

and there isn’t really demand for whale shark fins currently.

Yeah. I remember you telling me this. I’m pretty convinced,

sharks. That’s a more subtle goal, though.

but the thing is sometimes the bait balls are really small, or there aren’t many birds, and you still see a whale shark in there. One year I decided to try to measure the bait ball activity and, with the volunteers, recorded the number of birds and the size of the bait ball. We were thinking, ‘There must be some correlation if the bait ball is huge and there are all these birds.’ Sometimes it’s so big, so wide, it’s like crossing a football pitch, but there aren’t more whale sharks in there. So I’m curious. I think there’s something else we’re not understanding. Maybe there’s something to do with productivity, and the moon cycle, something else that’s maybe not so obvious. So that’d be a cool thing to study next. It’s a really good example of how whale shark presence is closely linked to other species as well. I was going to mention protection; can you talk about the lack of protection for whale sharks over there? Our study on whale sharks is pretty much the first long-term field study on any shark species in Madagascar. I wasn’t really aware of that until speaking with Rhett Bennett, from WCS, who we work with. There aren’t any shark or ray species protected in Madagascar, mainly due to the lack of baseline data. So, now that we have all of this data, we’re contributing to getting some sort of protected status for the whale sharks. We’re collaborating now with a few local partners to get that to happen, but Madagascar is a complicated country where there are a lot of other issues. There’s a big famine going on currently, and so it isn’t a priority. But yeah, currently, whale sharks are not protected at all. It’s a tricky one though, because people are not fishing the whale sharks, so why should they be listed? There is a kind of self-regulation happening now where, because people now see how much they’re worth to tourism, they possibly don’t fish them for that reason. Also, from what I’ve heard, it’s because meat isn’t very good, it’s a lot of work to bring whale sharks back,

OC E AN GIANTS SUMMER 2022

So they’re mainly caught as bycatch, if they get stuck in nets set for other animals. I think what really needs to happen is some sort of control over what’s being fished, and some control of the gear and the methods being used, so that it’s less detrimental for all the shark species, including the whale

It’s a great point, and I guess a core philosophy we both share is that it’s important to do what’s most effective, not just what sounds good. Sometimes the simple-sounding action isn’t the most effective conservation strategy. Turtles are officially protected in Madagascar, so people don’t fish them, but they still die because they get stuck in nets. People we work with, especially recently during the pandemic, have seen lots of dead turtles, floating around. They’re listed, but is protection making any difference? Protection does nothing without enforcement. Just from a broad perspective, regarding protection laws, if people aren’t catching any protected species then there’s no reason to change their gear. If they *are* catching listed protected species, then there can be more justification for gear restrictions where they’re needed, which can help to reduce whale shark catch, but also the bycatch of other, unprotected but endangered species that are being affected by the same techniques. Habitat protection is helped by the presence of these big iconic animals too. Yeah. And the thing is, there used to be so many sharks in Madagascar. It’s been such a shark hotspot, especially in the Mozambique Channel. When you speak to people, especially in the south, everyone was catching sharks. They’ve been completely depleted now but, because of the lack of tourism, people are fishing even more sharks and rays and anything else they can find, just to survive. So that’s definitely a big issue. Even if it’s not directly affecting whale sharks, it’s affecting the habitat and the ecosystem, which are all linked, right? Sure. Some people are thinking that the pandemic and the lack of tourism are helping ecosystems to recover. You’re thinking that the opposite is going on in Madagascar at the moment?

WHALE SHARKS OF MADAGASCAR

I’m a bit torn between the two. There’s been less whale shark

and they overlap with the start of the whale shark season.

tourism. They’ve probably been able to feed more, without

Then, there’s a really cool species called the Omura’s whale,

disturbance, which is great. They’ve probably been hit by

which is still very mysterious. Madagascar is one of the only

boats less. So it might be good for them. I know from local

places where they’re often seen, and they’re just amazing.

sources and friends, though, that there’s been a lot more poaching going on, and more sharks and fish getting caught. People are just really desperate for cash, and they can get quick cash from selling shark fins to Comoros and to China. That’s a market that’s just been rising, despite the pandemic. So, that is worrying. It does make me wonder, really, how sustainable and reliable tourism is. I remember us sitting on the boat with a journalist friend telling him that tourism would save whale sharks. I really believed that, but then I see what’s happening now when tourism suddenly stops. It’s a tricky one.

Given that it is such an important area for marine species, is there an effort underway to look at managing the area and protecting it? There’s definitely interest. Thanks to WCS, who we’re working with, there’s been discussion and an actual agreement to expand two existing marine protected areas, north and south of Nosy Be, into one bigger MPA that would encompass some of the whale shark habitat. That would be a huge win, but there are still open questions – will it be a no-fishing zone? Will there be boat speed regulations? I’m not sure about the answers there. I’ve provided data to support that

Yeah. It’s hard. Effectively, tourism has been subsidizing the costs of research and protecting the sharks as well. There’s no other mechanism in place to get that stuff done. Obviously, a big part of my attention is always on sustainable financing for nonprofits. The pandemic has brought it home that if you’re reliant on ecotourism, as good as the industry can be, when it stops, everyone’s in trouble.

process, and the acoustic array we’ll deploy this year will

It’s been a big wake-up call for us, for me especially. If there

It’s good that you’re excited by this stuff.

was no pandemic, I’d be earning a little living, but it would

Oh yeah. I’m still so excited about it. Yeah, there is a second

be stable. We’d have enough money coming into to have a stable research program but, now, everything’s upside down. We need to think of other creative ways to get funding in, without relying on tourism, so it’s a big change from what we were doing before.

provide a lot of answers on the residency of the sharks. Actually, with the satellite tracking, you identified another place where they were spending a lot of time at the surface. Yeah. That’s been really exciting, and I think even more exciting is the fact that it’s really remote and difficult to get to.

place – near Pointe d’Analalava – where the whale sharks, at least the whale sharks from Nosy Be, go and feed – but we don’t know if it’s all the same sharks. Maybe there are some sharks that only use that area and don’t come to Nosy Be. We’ve seen from the satellite tracks that they do surface

A resilient approach. Yeah. So, coming back to the Nosy Be area itself, obviously the whale sharks have been a big focus for your work – but they’re only one of the giant, iconic animals that are found in that region.

feed, and we’ve seen bait balls there, so it might be similar

Yeah. It’s an amazing area. We see many dolphin species,

you’d think on a road it would be a few hours. No, it’s two

many turtle species. Once we saw a leatherback turtle, which

days on the roads, if you don’t stop. I’ve been there twice

was pretty cool. I was lucky to see it, but we also see many

now. Once, I hitchhiked overland to get there, then hitchhiked

mobula rays, quite frequently, and sometimes giant manta rays.

out on a boat but, after all that, we didn’t have enough fuel to

We’re putting together a paper on the manta rays, and it would

actually reach the area I was interested in. The second time it

be the first paper on manta rays in Madagascar, so that’s

was more of a planned expedition to find the sharks, but we

exciting. Then there are the humpback whales coming through,

didn’t see any. So I’m still very intrigued by the area.

to Nosy Be. I’m hoping to deploy some acoustic receivers down there, so that if we tag some whale sharks in Nosy Be, and they go there, we can pick it up. It’s a really beautiful place. It’s only 180 km by sea, so

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

WHALE SHARKS OF MADAGASCAR

Mitsio Archepelago

Nosy Be

Pointe d’Analalava

MADAGASCAR

(left) The study area in northwest Madagascar. (below) A satellite-tagged whale shark off Nosy Be.

If they ask for you to come on the boat, you go on the boat. If they ask you to come to the other side of the island to give a speech, you do it. It’s been kind of exhausting for me, but it’s slowly paying off.

I thought that result was a really good testament to why satellite tracking can be useful, because it’s identified a place that we didn’t know whale sharks were hanging out. But they clearly are, based on the eight satellite-tagged sharks – several of them spent quite a lot of time in that area. Yeah. When I was there, I spoke with some local fishermen who sometimes see them, but no one really knew what was going on. Unless we do photo-ID, we’re not really going to know how many whale sharks are there. I’m quite curious as to whether it’s a big hotspot, or just a small one, or if the sharks are just there for a few days a year. It’s the same with the Mitsio Archipelago, further north of us, in that the tagged sharks also spent time up there. There’s a big hotel there with a dive center, but they never really see whale sharks. So there’s still a lot we need to understand. We’ve talked about tourism in passing. One of the aspects of your work that has really impressed me is the way that you interact with the tourism operators around Nosy Be. Very quickly, it’s gone from basically unmanaged tourism, to successful ecotourism. I know there are some issues, but compared to a lot of places around the world, I think it works pretty well. Can you explain what you’ve done to help that situation along? So initially, in 2016, we had that first operator saying, ‘We want to include a code of conduct. We want to add one to this place,’ but the other operators were like, ‘No, we don’t agree.’ You remember this response? It was quite shocking, and I remember feeling quite sad like, ‘Oh, how are we going to do this?’

There were two papers that helped. One from Jackie Ziegler in Mexico saying, ‘We spoke with tourists after the tour, and these are the things that they liked the most, and that mattered to them most,’ and one of them was spending as much time as possible with the shark, for example. And then your paper, from you and Peter Haskell in Mozambique, looked at whale shark avoidance behaviors and laid out, ‘Whale sharks will respond to this and this, and this’. Basically for me, that gave us a recipe for success. If you can meet the needs of the tourists coming to swim with whale sharks, and you can guarantee they’re going to receive what they paid for, that in turn benefits the operator and their reputation. And at the same time, if you follow what’s been shown in the science – we know certain things make whale sharks react negatively, so we avoid them. For me, that was quite clear. Then it was just a matter of, ‘How do we share this information in a user-friendly way with people?’ That was a real exercise and it took a bit of trying. We printed a very simple code of conduct, and we distributed that around, but it was still difficult and there was still this little petty fighting between the operators at sea. So then I decided to go and meet all of them individually. That’s been a long-term effort. It means spending a lot of time repeating the same speech and trying to convince people with the same arguments. But it kind of worked. Slowly, people were trusting me more, and we’ve had this huge advantage in Madagascar of having been quite late to the whale shark tourism party. We could already see that ‘Oh, these people followed a code of conduct, and it worked. These people didn’t, and it’s a mess.’ With these two papers, I thought we had all the information we needed, so the question then was

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WHALE SHARKS OF MADAGASCAR

mostly, ‘How do we empower people to make it happen?’ The answer seems to be, simply, ‘Invest time with them.’ If they ask for you to come on the boat, you go on the boat. If

they wanted to renew their law against swimming with

they ask you to come to the other side of the island to give a

humpbacks and how to approach humpbacks properly.

speech, you do it. It’s been kind of exhausting for me, but it’s

We’re adding an appendix to that law about the whale shark

slowly paying off. The last two training sessions we did were

code of conduct, so I’m proud of that. Soon enough it’s going

in collaboration with Cetamada, a humpback whale research

to be an official law in Madagascar.

and education NGO on the east side of Madagascar. I

There probably isn’t going to be any enforcement, though,

knew of them since my first visit to Madagascar, and they got

so I think the great level of self-regulation now going on

funding to train guides for humpback whale watching. It was

in Nosy Be is the most important thing – if someone isn’t

a natural progression to include whale sharks in that.

following the rules, then most of the people are going to

They came to Nosy Be and rented a big room for the

scream at them. If all the actors are empowered enough

Malagasy operators. Cetamada spoke about humpback

about what’s right, then it self regulates, I think, as long as it

whales for a day, and I spoke about whale sharks for a

remains this small.

day. Then we went to sea and showed how, in practice, you

Before COVID, there was a lot more tourism happening

approach both whale sharks and humpback whales. People

each year. Actually, I think from 2015 to 2019, the number

were paid for their time, they were given lunch; there was

of international tourists coming in had doubled, and thanks

nothing to be lost for them. So I think that’s definitely the way

to the economic study on whale shark tourism we did with

forward, to empower people and actually make them want to

Jackie Ziegler, we know that it’s bringing in a lot of money for

come, even if it means buying them lunch.

Madagascar. There’s definitely more attention on Nosy Be,

It’s definitely something I’m going to do more of, and it’s been really great because we really see the difference out at sea. I’ve been quite surprised, I have to say, because initially, I was very conscious that I’m a white woman giving orders to local men. They know a lot more about the sea than me, but because I’m a scientist, and I can kind of explain the science in an easy way, then it made it really approachable for them. There is a fine line between that and giving out information in a patronizing way. We’ve had a few more issues with other expats from Europe. But slowly it’s improving.

Coming back to what we were saying about laws and enforcement, after delivering that training with Cetamada,

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and more people wanting to visit. Yeah, that’s the thing – during a good whale shark season, everything can be easy. Everyone has their own private shark. On the slow days, though, where I’ve seen 50 boats trying to get in with two whale sharks in other places, that’s where the value of regulation can come through. Ultimately, in Madagascar, I think that so much of the success with whale shark tourism there is down to your hard work, over multiple seasons, with that constant engagement – just wearing people down really, as they realise that you’re not going anywhere!

(right) Stella and skipper on a tourism vessel. (below) Tourists swimming with a whale shark.

Heading out for a day of whale shark tourism.

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10% of profit from the whale

shark collection is donated to the

Marine Megafauna Foundation

See more at waterlust.com

MMF collaborator, Stella Diamant, wearing Waterlust’s Whale Shark Warrior Leggings. Madagascar

The MWSP education team working with children on Nosy Be.

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WHALE SHARKS OF MADAGASCAR

Yeah. Although I’m going to need some help now, because it’s getting to be too much work for one person. I need to find another person as stubborn as me. Really, I think it’s so important that we scientists share what we know with the community. Initially, I thought, ‘Oh, they don’t really care’. But the captains know the whale sharks now. They recognize individuals. I think there’s a lot to do, everywhere in the world, to empower local people to care – it comes with getting to know the sharks, helping them meet the sharks. It might seem trivial, because we see them all the time, but they really appreciate it. Locally, is the view on whale sharks fairly positive? I know you’ve been doing a lot of marine conservation education in the community as well. Yeah, so thanks to MMF for your support, because I came to Tofo in 2018 and saw how the education program was run there, and then we adapted that for Madagascar. We have a second education person now, as of a few months ago, so, we have two staff members and 16 classes we work with. There’s definitely a lot of demand for growth, especially from the kids, and from the teachers on educating kids about plastic, marine life, and what’s out there – and taking them to see things. Of course, that transmits to parents directly. That’s a part I love, because you see results really fast. The kids did a video clip, with a song about plastic, a rap song – it’s really catchy. Once I grabbed a shared tuk-tuk and there were kids in it and they were singing the song and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s why it all matters, because – eventually – it has real impact.’ There’s more that we aren’t doing, that I would love to do, and I’m not sure exactly how to do it yet. Especially speaking with the fishermen, and interacting with the adult population that are not involved in tourism, because we’re not in touch with them now.

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WHALE SHARKS OF MADAGASCAR

We need people with grit more than exactly the right education, or with the highest number of papers. I think there’s a real kind of can-do experience that is a bit lacking in developing young conservationists. I encourage people to be more open to young people that are working to start something.

Most people are fine with whale sharks. They’re associated

approached things, because you didn’t ask me about my

with other fish, like the tuna we discussed earlier, and of

papers or about my education. You just said, ‘Oh, this

course, the tourism industry brings in money. So adults like

sounds like a good idea, and it matches with what we’re

them, and the kids love them because they know all the cool

trying to do at MMF’.

facts about whale sharks now. That’s awesome. Anything else you want to wrap up with? It’s been a ride. I never thought it would go this far, but it has, so I guess it shows that anything is possible. One of the things I try to do now is to share my journey and motivate other people, especially women, because we don’t need a PhD. We don’t need certain education. We just need grit

I wish more people in the science world were like this, because things aren’t great. There’s a climate crisis, there are species going extinct. We need people with grit more than exactly the right education, or with the highest number of papers. I think there’s a real kind of can-do experience that is a bit lacking in developing young conservationists. I encourage people to be more open to young people that are working to start something.

and motivation, I think, and there’s so much to be done still.

Definitely. Well, that’s been awesome. Thank you so much for chatting to us today.

I think grit really sums up one of your primary personality traits. I know it’s been a long ride, as you say.

Happy to. It’s nice to look back after all these years!

Thank you. Yeah. It’s been surprising. I remember getting in touch with you. You were refreshing in the way you

Watch the conversation with Stella!

OC E AN GIANTS SUMMER 2022

(right) Whale shark approaching a tourism vessel off Nosy Be. (below) Stella leading a whale shark tourism workshop.

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

MANTA RAYS of Florida

In conversation with

JESSICA PATE

Cape Canaveral

West Palm Beach

FLORIDA

(previous) Juvenile manta off the Florida coast. (left) The two (general) study areas in eastern Florida, USA. (below) A manta ray cruising off the beach.

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MANTA RAYS IN FLORIDA

in conversation with JESSICA PATE

That took a while to figure out. It definitely didn’t go directly

JESSICA PATE IS THE FOUNDER OF THE FLORIDA MANTA PROJECT, based in Florida USA, and MMF’s US Country Manager.

- Simon Pierce

from me seeing my first manta, to starting a research project. There were about seven years in between. After doing the turtle research, I went to grad school, where I tried to convince my advisor (who was an expert on sea turtles) to let me do a manta ray project. It just didn’t work out. Then, after grad school, I worked on a sailboat for a year and sailed across the Atlantic. I came back to Florida afterward to work on sea turtles again. That whole time, the manta project was always in the back of my mind. Before I could get it started, though, we had to

HOW THE PROJECT BEGAN

find out if there were even enough mantas here for a viable study. I’d only seen a handful; maybe I’d just gotten lucky. So,

I first moved to Florida after university to study sea turtles.

back in 2016, my boyfriend and I rented a boat on our days

That meant getting up at the crack of dawn, jumping on an

off work and went out searching. We found them on about

ATV, and driving up and down the beach all day to count

50% of our surveys that first summer. So it was like, check,

turtle nesting tracks from the night before. I was out on the

we can find them, even though we were just driving around

beach all the time for that job. While I was driving the ATV

looking for black spots in the ocean.

down the beach, sometimes I’d look over and see a manta

I’d talked to Andrea back when I was first working on the

swimming by in very, very shallow water. I used to bring my

project idea for grad school, and she’d offered to help me

fins and my mask along on the ATV and try to swim out to

out. So I got back in touch with her again, years later, to say,

them. I never was successful.

‘hey, it’s me again. I found some mantas.’ She was still super

I talked to all the scientists I knew, and no one knew anything about them, so I convinced a friend of mine to take me out on his boat. We went out and found one, the first manta I was

interested, and I was able to start the Florida Manta Project to study this never-before-researched population of manta rays. We have two study areas in Florida now: one in

ever able to swim with. She flipped upside down and hovered

southeastern Florida, where we have a population of juvenile

underneath me for five minutes, checking me out. I didn’t know

manta rays, and one a bit further north at Cape Canaveral

it was even possible to have an interaction like that. I freaked

where adult manta rays pass through in the springtime. I still

out and could barely take a photo, even though I had my

find it so improbable that such a large charismatic species,

camera in my hand the whole time. After that, I just thought

which people travel halfway around the world to see, was

‘mantas are awesome, I want to study these animals’.

here waiting for us to find. A MANTA NURSERY? M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

In south Florida, it’s exclusively juvenile manta rays. When I first learned how big mantas are when they’re born, I was completely shocked. We do a lot of outreach and education work now, so I talk to anglers all the time. They’re like, ‘we saw a manta, it was so big.’ I’ll reply, ‘it was a baby’. And they say, ‘No, you don’t understand, it was really big – it was five feet across.’ They’re blown away when I tell them that yes, that’s how big manta rays are when they’re born! In other places, divers normally see manta rays while they’re at cleaning stations on reefs. Here, divers hardly ever see manta rays at all. You’re more likely to see a manta while walking down the beach than you are when diving on the reef.

Close approach by a friendly juvenile manta ray.

MANTA RAYS IN FLORIDA

In other places, divers normally see manta rays while they’re at cleaning stations on reefs. Here, divers hardly ever see manta rays at all. You’re more likely to see a manta while walking down the beach than you are when diving on the reef.

The mantas particularly like some of the areas around inlets. Most of the inlets are man-made, created for boats to access the ocean. There are probably a lot of nutrients that flow out to sea from these inlets. We see the mantas feeding on the seaward side of the inlets on the outgoing tide. They’ll sit inside the inlets too, probably resting in the current flow, taking a little breather. Of course, there may be observer bias to seeing mantas in clear shallow water because that is the easiest place to spot them. That’s why we use acoustic and satellite telemetry as well. This region is potentially a nursery habitat for manta rays. In scientific terms, there are three criteria that have to be met for us to formally call it a nursery. First, the habitat has to be used across years and, second, individuals have a tendency to remain over time. We re-sight about 50% of manta individuals, and we’ve seen juvenile mantas using the same area over multiple years now. Through photo-identification, we can also see that the same individuals are present across years in some cases – we’ve seen one male over four seasons, and he was a juvenile that whole time. Third, there have to be more juvenile mantas here than in other areas. That criterion is harder to establish, even though we exclusively see juveniles in our study area. We have a giant coastline to monitor, not just a little island system, and we know from satellite tagging studies that the juvenile mantas do move along the entire coast. We think they prefer certain areas along the east coast, such as our study area here in southeast Florida, but that third criterion is the one we’re still trying to figure out.

MANTAS IN THE MURK Our second study site is up near Cape Canaveral on the central Florida coast. We’ve just finished our second year of research up there. It’s the hardest field research I’ve done in my life. Five-foot (1.52m) visibility is good there. It’s hard to even see the mantas in the water, and keeping up with them is extremely difficult, even using a drone for support. As they descend they completely disappear into the murk. There are fishing boats around everywhere, and the mantas are there at the time of year when the weather is at its worst. It makes for some ‘interesting’ conditions. We try to time fieldwork for when the mantas are there, and during a weather window, but that’s hard to coordinate. There are so many mantas up there though; probably hundreds. We’ve counted up to 60 on one aerial survey. Our tracking work has shown that juvenile mantas swim through that area, but most of the mantas we’ve seen there are adults. The individuals we’ve tagged and gotten measurements on have been about 4.5 m across. Tagging has been the priority so far, and we managed to deploy four tags this year. We’re always trying to get an ID shot for each individual with a satellite tag, and then take a genetic sample from the manta. We were out for a couple of weeks and got 14 ID shots, which we were pretty proud of. I’m hoping to be able to look at the genetic connectivity between the two areas of the coast, to see if the mantas are related, but it’s going to take me a while to get enough samples. It’s all just so much more difficult up there. Trying to get all this information from the same animal, and to get all the data as perfect as I want, has turned out to be rather ambitious.

OC E AN GIANTS SUMMER 2022

(right) Drone view of a juvenile manta in the shallows. (below) Jessica conducting an aerial survey off Florida.

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

MANTA RAYS IN FLORIDA

EYES IN THE SKY Using drones in our research has been a huge advance. I can barely believe we were able to work without them for so long. For the first 3–4 years, we were just looking out for black dots. It was so much more difficult. Now, we routinely use drones to locate mantas – it gives us a much wider field of view. We can’t do that everywhere along the coast, as there are international airports close to the beach, but it’s super useful. That overhead view enables us to look more closely at their behaviors, too. They swim quite differently when they’re just traveling from place to place compared to when they’re feeding. Off the beach, they’ll drag their cephalic fins along the seafloor to stir zooplankton out of the sediment. We often see them feeding just below the surface too, and their resting behavior in the inlets is different again. We’re analyzing some new data right now, from our fieldwork up in central Florida with adult mantas, where they feed on the surface with their backs out of the water – the fishermen call it “barging”. They’re moving so slowly, pushing against the water to feed, that their kinematics are actually similar to the resting behavior we see in the juveniles. It’ll be interesting to look at the energetics of these different behaviors, particularly in conjunction with the plankton sampling we’ve been doing recently.

OC E AN GIANTS SUMMER 2022

(above) Jessica launching the drone. (left) Drone view of a cruising manta ray.

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

Because the juvenile mantas feed around the inlets, and rest in the current outflows, they often get hit by boats motoring through. We’ve even seen it happen. Lots of mantas have fresh injuries from propellers, and our data is probably only the tip of the iceberg – a big underestimate of the true incidence – because we only see the survivors.

OC E AN GIANTS SUMMER 2022

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

(left) Juvenile manta with embedded fishing lure. (below) Aerial view of a manta ray cruising past a fishing pier.

OC E AN GIANTS SUMMER 2022

MANTA RAYS IN FLORIDA

HUMAN IMPACTS

into it, the mantas often get accidentally hooked. Typically the

We see conservation issues in both study areas. Because

line will break, and the mantas end up with this long trailing

the juvenile mantas feed around the inlets, and rest in the

line. Then, as they’re looping around while feeding, they can

current outflows, they often get hit by boats motoring through.

become fully entangled.

We’ve even seen it happen. Lots of mantas have fresh injuries

We even found one manta with an entire fishing pole still

from propellers, and our data are probably only the tip of

attached to it. My intern got in, she pulled up all the line, and

the iceberg – a big underestimate of the true incidence –

the fishing pole was still there at the other end. Someone

because we only see the survivors. Superficial boat strikes

probably wasn’t watching their gear, and when the manta

heal up really quickly too, which makes injuries hard to track.

swam into the line it pulled their whole fishing pole off the pier.

I’m curious to know why the mantas don’t appear to be

Now, we’re encouraging the anglers to keep an eye out

more bothered by the boats. They’ll be resting in the inlet, and

when they’re fishing, and if they see a manta to reel in their

the boats drive right over them. I am interested in learning

lines. They don’t want to hook manta rays, they don’t want to

more about manta hearing, because they must be living in

lose their tackle, and they certainly don’t want to lose their rod

such a noisy environment in south Florida.

and reel. We’ve got signs up at fishing piers now to inform

Juvenile mantas get entangled in fishing gear as well. About a quarter of our mantas have been entangled in fishing line at some point. Most of those have had multiple fishing line

anglers about what to do if they see a manta, and how to report their sightings for science. Up at Cape Canaveral, there’s a very different fishing

entanglements. The first step to mitigate this was to figure out

community. There’s a whole recreational fishery that’s based

exactly how these interactions are occurring.

around manta rays that has become super popular over the past

We interviewed about 200 recreational anglers, focusing on the people that fish off piers, jetties, and other structures. We found out that, in general, they know what a manta is, but

10 years. People go out and look for mantas because cobia travel along with them, and they want to fish for the cobia. We’re doing a study right now, talking to experienced

they don’t know anything else about them. They don’t know

anglers – mostly fishing guides who have been fishing for

if they’re protected or endangered; they just think mantas are

decades – to find out how that fishery has changed, and the

cool and beautiful.

problems associated with it. They’ve described some mantas

Over half said they don’t do anything if they see them while

as swimming ‘Christmas trees’, with rows of jigs down the front

fishing, they just sit and watch them. That was key information

of their pectoral fins. Some of them have said that you used to

for us, because – and we have plenty of videos of this

go up to a manta and see 20 cobia around them, and now

happening – if they leave the line set, and the manta swims

you’re lucky to find one.

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

MANTA RAYS IN FLORIDA

There are so many interesting questions to ask around that

they ate, and also count the plastics that they ended up

fishery. I really like working with the anglers, they’re super

ingesting accidentally.

interested and want to help. There are so many boats out

I actually just wrote a children’s book about a Florida manta

there though, it’s just insanity, with people zooming about

ray who lost one of his fin tip, based on an real Florida manta

amongst breaching mantas.

ray we’ve named Kevin. Kevin is trying to keep up with the other mantas, and he visits all of the Florida ecosystems. The

EDUCATION Everybody we talk to over here, when I tell them I study manta rays, they think I’m talking about manatees. About 90% of the time, they’re like ‘I love manatees!’ And I also love manatees. Manatees are great. But that’s not what I’m studying. People just don’t know what manta rays are. I figured that one of the best ways to raise awareness would be to teach the kids, and have them come home and educate

book will be published this year. Our goal is to get the book in as many schools as possible so that people become more familiar with the species. One of my end goals is for manta rays to be as iconic in Florida as sea turtles and manatees are. These animals are instantly recognizable, everyone knows that those animals are protected, and they usually know some facts about them as well. I’d love for the manta rays to be considered that way too.

their parents. We have lesson plans for schools, where kids can pretend to be a manta, they can feed, count the plankton

Watch the conversation with Jessica!

OC E AN GIANTS SUMMER 2022

One of my end goals is for manta rays to be as iconic in Florida as sea turtles and manatees are. These animals are instantly recognizable, everyone knows that those animals are protected, and they usually know some facts about them as well. I’d love for the manta rays to be considered that way too.

(above) Jessica teaching a class about manta ray ecology and conservation.

M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G

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