And in some locations, researchers would see the mantas for a few weeks or months, but they wouldn't find any at all for the rest of the year. Stewart, who is also the associate director of the nonprofit conservation organization Manta Trust, explained that individual mantas can be identified by unique patterns of spots on their bellies photos of mantas captured by researchers, dive tours and citizen scientists were used to track mantas over time.īut sometimes, nearly two decades would elapse between sightings, Stewart said. So for a long time, no one was tagging them," Stewart told Live Science. "They live in hard-to-reach places - and in a lot of these places, it's challenging to find them consistently. But tracking even very large animals in the open ocean can be extremely difficult, and mantas have always been especially so, according to lead study author Josh Stewart, a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. With a "wingspan" that can extend more than 23 feet (7 meters), mantas are the largest rays and one of the ocean's biggest fishes. The discovery radically changes scientists' understanding of mantas' habits and carries dramatic implications for their conservation. Rather, they spend their lives in much more localized areas, the researchers found. The scientists were surprised to find that these giants of the deep are not long-distance seasonal commuters at all. Researchers investigated data gathered from tracking devices on the manta rays, as well as chemical and DNA analysis of the rays' muscle tissues. Until recently, manta rays - which sail through tropical and temperate ocean waters, looking much like enormous kites - were thought to migrate great distances across ocean basins, as do many of the largest marine animals.īut a new study finds that these big fish have a much smaller range than scientists had thought.
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