Republished from simplyscuba.com
We recently hung out with the cool team at Simply Scuba over on their blog. They kindly invited us to write a guest post, and to tell their readers about the plight of manta rays in Indonesia.
Manta ray fisheries are doubling every year in Indonesia, driven by the expanding Asian market for wildlife medicines and shark fins. With some small villages harvesting as many as 3,000 mantas per year, this rapid growth brings both environmental and social impacts. MantaWatch is urging the Indonesian government to take action through their petition to Save Manta Rays in Indonesia.
Indonesian fisherman have hunted manta rays for centuries. In small wooden canoes they paddle across the ocean, searching for remote places where the mantas congregate. A small harpoon, physical strength, and luck are their only weapons. Understandably, the manta holds a central place in the cultures and traditions of these communities. In some villages, adolescent boys are not considered men until they have successfully returned from a manta hunt.
