I am so happy to come back to Labuan Bajo and to be involved in MIP again this year. Two years ago I was an intern, and now I’m joining the program as a mentor.
Today was a very exciting day. Our special guest Sarah Lewis from Manta Trust is still with us, and she has been sharing her experience and passion for manta conservation and inspiring the MIP team.
Today the entire team spent the day with Sarah surveying Karang Makassar. We sailed out from Labuan Bajo onboard Mimic with Wunderpus Diving.
Once we got to the site and entered the water, unfortunately I had to stop my dive after descending only one meter. I’m recovering from flu, and started to have a headache as I went deeper and the pressure increased. Safety first! I went back to the surface, and left the other eight members of our team to continue the survey.
The water was very clear, and I could see mantas below me from the boat. I grabbed my snorkel, and jumped back into the water, where I was able to record swim nine mantas. Karang Makassar is one of my favourite sites to see mantas – even if you don’ t dive you can still see them!
After one hour, the rest of the team surfaced from their dive. We had all recorded at least seven mantas!
Now it was rush hour in Karang Makassar. I counted nine boats around us. I wonder whether this disturbs the manta rays? From the data collected by MantaWatch over the past 5 years we can see a correlation between number of boats and number of mantas. More boats means less mantas! But is this disturbance or something else?
The second survey dive started, but still I could not join. This was quite a long dive, and eventually the team surfaced again from the depths. Everyone had recorded mantas, and the slower current enabled lots of good ID photos to be collected. Back on the boat, everyone sat around comparing ID photos and recognising their mantas.
Before the third dive we had a delicious lunch (thanks Wunderpus Diving crew) and Divo and Luci practiced their manta briefing. Their knowledge and presentation has improved a lot since their first manta briefing.
The tide had started to fall for the third dive. The water was colder, and the visibility lower. The team did not record any mantas on the final dive, but did record whitetip reef sharks, marbled rays and turtles in their MantaWatch logbooks.
Today was a great day, and lots of manta sightings. On the journey back to Labuan Bajo we were still having fun, and Niomi and Dita thought us some traditional Indonesian dances and songs.
