It’s mating season, and today we saw more than 20 mantas dancing beautifully as we tried to take ID photos.

Riza, Vidlia, Ichsan, and Elitza joined Divine Diving and their guests to survey Karang Makassar. They faced moderate current, but by now their diving skills have advanced and, by staying close to the bottom, were able to get good ID photos.

Vidlia and Riza give a manta briefing

In the classroom, Satria and I had many things to do. We compared the manta ID photos collected from the day boats with those we collected on the manta safari. Satria made a poster with information about the Manta Month Awards evening we will host this coming Friday. And I went to the Marine and Fisheries Agency with Andy to discuss the West Manggarai manta ray sanctuary. Tomorrow our whole team will give a presentation about manta rays and our work to their staff. It will be a really good opportunity to continue our support for the manta ray sanctuary.

In our presentation to the Marine and Fisheries Agency we want to explain about manta rays, and the high potential for manta ray tourism in West Manggarai. We also want to present a concept for manta ray education in primary and secondary schools that supports key learning themes in the school curriculum. We hope that everyone in West Manggarai will know about the richness of their marine environment, which is rare to find in other places of the world.