This page is updated regularly and at least every month, so please pop in to see what our "flappy friends" are up to.
Matt and Anne-Marie will be back on Sea Spirit from July 2012.
We will be organising a programme of special manta weeks throughout the year so please contact us or keep an eye out on this website for future announcements
You can book direct to Maldives Scuba tours: www.scubascuba.com and contact me me if you have any questions anne-marie.kitchen-wheeler@ncl.ac.uk
New article available at www.springerlink.com in journal Environmental Biology of Fishes:
Population estimates of Alfred mantas (Manta alfredi) in central Maldives atolls: North Male, Ari and Baa
Anne-Marie Kitchen-Wheeler, Csilla Ari and Alasdair J. Edwards
November 2011
The monsoons started to change early this year and we were finding mantas widely dispersed, encountering them on both the east and west of Felidhoo and Ari atolls. We found a new cleaning area in Felidhoo which was exciting.
For several years we have been visiting a lagoon where we frequently saw mantas feeding during the night, attracted by the boat lights. There are now three regular mantas attending and we have noticed that they are bringing other mantas with them. The reguilars are juveniles whilst the others are larfer and morelikely adults. This is very interesting from a learning and communication perspective. Over recent weeks we have seen up to seven mantas at a time feeding and now we are able to snorkel and dive with them. As the animals are busy feeding they are not affected by the presence of divers so close encounters are commonly experienced.
October 2011
The majority of time was spent in North and South Male and Ari atolls. We visited all the regular cleaning stations and although the mantas were around, they were lower in number than might be expected for one of the main mating season periods. We had a great snorkelling session at Guraidhoo although there were lots of jellyfish in the water, which the mantas were eating! This months was good for whale sharks in south Ari.
Sepetember 2011
We had a special charter to the mid-north atolls and were able to spend time around Hanifaru. In common with other manta areas this season, there were less mantas around due to a lack of food caused by changes in upwellings. This is a la Nina year and there have been many changes in water temperatures and extremes of weather reported throughout the Indo-Pacific. Nevertheless we spent a couple of days there and watched up to 6 mantas feeding and saw Kylie and Titch, two regularly sighted juveniles who are commonly seen in the lagoon. We also saw a large adult female who was cleaned at the main cleaning block for over two hours.
March 2011
News from Tracy on Sea Spirit is that mating season kicked off about a week before the March full moon (March 19th) at Table thila where lots of males were seen chasing females and there were LOTS of mantas around. No photos at the moment but we are hoping to get some video uo on you-tube soon.
February 2011
Lisa has been reporting from Sea Queen from the far north where they have visited the recently discovered cleaning stations at Big Thila and Mantavvari. The mantas are being seen on a regular basis at these sites but the mantas are a little nervous of divers so are quite hard to identify! Here are pictures of two new database mantas. They are both young adult males
January 2011
We did not see Fiona (photo below) again since mid November so we just have to hope she is OK after she was discovered with the large bite.
We are now into the NE monsoon period. Despite the strange currents and colder than usual water, the seasons did not change until mid December. During the Christmas /New Year trip we visited the cleaning stations at Maavaru, Madivaru and Table Thila and were very happy to have mantas pop up at each of them. We were delighted to see Freda manta at Madivaru who we have missed for two years, but she is looking good!
We had 15 adult mantas at Table Thila, we managed to identify 11 of them and surprisingly, 7 had been seen before, which is the highest proportion of repeat animals at this site in the 8 years we have visited.
In mid-January we managed to carry out a few dives at Boduhithi-Rasfari North. This is not the most realiable of sites - the main reason we had not visited for a while- but it was happenning on the days we went.
In this photo you can see the water surface and the reef very easily because this amazing cleaning station site is only 3 metres deep! The mantas swim around somewhere between the two and us divers hug the bottom as tightly as we can to keep out of the way of the mantas which regularly just swim over our heads
The main reason the mantas come here is apparent in this picture of North Male atoll regular: Nancy. She is covered in cleaners! The site is just teeming with juvenile blunthead wrasse. It is not unusual to cout 150 cleaners on a single manta. I can make out many more than 50 in the picture above.
The above picture was taken with a 10-18mm lens would all the way in because the manta was so close.
Check out our latest videos:
Manta Massing Video
Manta Night Dive Video
Manta Cleaning Video
08/05/08 Manta airlifted to freedom see pictures
19/06/07 Manta born in captivity see article
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