Today we met with the Marine and Fisheries Agency (Dina’s Kelautan dan Perikanan, DKP) of West Manggarai. DKP gave us an opportunity to share our manta ray knowledge, and to present some of our ideas and materials for using manta rays as case studies to support primary and secondary school curricula.

At 10:00 we arrived at the DKP office. It is in a new part of town that I have not visited before, and we travelled there by bimo or local bus. When we arrived at the DKP office we met Mr Johannes Yamu, who we coordinated with for this meeting. Mr Johannes is the Officer who wrote a lot of the new decree declaring West Manggarai and Komodo manta sanctuary, and we are very excited to meet him.

Ranny presents to DKP

Mr Bemadus Odem, Deputy Head of DKP, and Mr Mangayung, Head of the Department of Marine, Coasts and Small Islands also attended the meeting. We began by introducing ourselves, then the DKP staff gave us some background to the marine and fisheries situation in West Manggarai. Next Ranny gave an introduction to manta ray ecology, and Ichsan presented some results from his research thesis on the spatial distribution of manta rays in West Manggarai.

After our presentation, Mr Mangayung said that he was very happy and thanked the MantaWatch them for supporting the manta ray conservation movement in West Manggarai, He hoped that, following the surveys we have done this month, we will be able to contribute data on key manta sites and population size.

We are all very happy that DKP gave us this opportunity to discuss manta ray conservation in West Manggarai, and that we are able to contribute to these efforts. All of us interns are ready to support the DKP however we can to continue implementation of West Manggarai manta ray sanctuary.

DKP and MantaWatch