Luck is with the MantaWatch team. Each day is better than the day before, and each day we encounter even more manta rays!

Yesterday we recorded 10 mantas, and captured more than 8 ID photos. Today we met 16 mantas at Manta Point!

We set a target for the month to get 40 ID photos, and we now have more than 30. With only a few more days of diving left, I hope we can get the last few IDs that we need.

I think October is the best season to dive with manta rays in West Manggarai, no wonder its known as Manta Month! We’ve recorded many individuals coming to Manta Point for cleaning and courtship. We’ve even seen many males following behind a single female, like a manta mating train! At one point the mantas were so close, swimming around me and performing an acrobatic dance. It was so beautiful.

Manta train

We are all very happy because we can see and understand the mantas courtship behaviour for ourselves. And even though we had learned about this in the classroom and from the reading lists we were given at the start of the internship, it’s very different to see it firsthand. I think we are lucky to see this behaviour, because usually at this site we only see swimming, feeding and cleaning behaviour.

Our second dive today was Batu Bolong. This was the first time that I’ve dived this site, and I think it is one fo the best dive sites in Komodo National Park. We saw so many fish and turtles, including three Napoleon wrasse (Cheilinus undulatus), much bigger than the ones I saw at Castle Rock. But, if you want to go diving in Batu Bolong, you must be careful and follow the instructions of your dive guide. The site is very famous for strong currents and down currents. Some people have seen manta rays at Batu Bolong, but today we did not find any. I hope tomorrow we can see even more mantas than today, and reach our target.

Napoleon wrasse