Today is a rest day for us interns. After five days onboard the MV Tatawa searching for manta rays, we are ready for a day off! The past five days have been great, we’ve learned about manta rays, improved our diving skills, enhanced our underwater communication skills, and of course learned how to monitor manta rays. It has been a really good experience and team work.

2012 & 2013 MantaWatch Interns together

We are making good use of our day off to clean our equipment, and organize all the information we collected during the manta safari. Today is also a chance for us to explore Labuan Bajo, and to recharge and get ready for more manta surveys!

And yesterday we had a big surprise! Ichsan and Dita, alumni from the 2012 MantaWatch Internship Program, had arrived in Labuan Bajo and were waiting for us when we got off the boat. We’ve been talking with them so much, it is good opportunity to learn from our seniors.

Today we are also preparing materials to help us give a manta presentation to divers on the boat tomorrow. We’ve printed and laminated some interesting pictures to help illustrate our talk. Tomorrow Vidlia and I will go with Wicked Diving to Karang Makassar, while Satria and Riza will work in the classroom, and the next day we will swap. So tomorrow we start at 7am, with our energy refreshed to find more mantas!