Today began much faster than usual! We set off in Blue Marlin Dive’s speed-boat as the familiar coastlines and islands blurred by much quicker than we were used to. Our first stop was Komodo Island, where the tourists on board will trek in search of Komodo dragons in the wild.

Blue Marlin’s Maria with the MantaWatch interns

Happy with the improved presentations

Our team had a glimpse of these large reptiles a few days ago, so we decided to use the time to practice our manta education talks. How to best tell the story of manta rays in under 10 minutes? Luckily, Ichsan, an alumnus of the 2012 MantaWatch Internship Program was on hand to provide many tips on how to make the presentations easy to understand, entertaining, and yet informative. As a final practice Riza and Satria gave their presentation to Blue Marlin’s crew, who proved to be a captivated and engaged audience!

Sharing manta facts with Blue Marlin’s captivated crew…..

…and guests.

When everyone returned from their trek they too were very excited to learn about manta rays, Komodo’s most famous fish. The biggest surprise to them was that manta rays are not dangerous to humans–they can’t bite or sting. Full of new knowledge about manta rays the tourists jump into the water, eager for their first manta encounter.

While today was not our luckiest day for manta encounters–we only had one sighting–the MantaWatch team gained lots of practice sweeping the site for mantas using the “Flying V” formation. Along the way we also met many of manta ray relatives, including marble rays and eagle rays. Another great learning day!

The “Flying V” formation

Manta madness!!