Brief reminder of Part 1 (without any mistake )
' Manta ' in Spanish means mantle or blanket and is a good representation of the body shape of these fish. At more than 4m in length and weighing between 1 and 3 tonnes, manta rays are the largest in the world. They move slowly and gracefully and have a life expectancy of 50 years.
To feed, manta rays open their mouths and filter the sea water from which they colect zooplankton, which are shrimps, krill and planktonic crabs. The rays come to the cleanning stations every day to get rid of parasites on their bodies, in their mouths and gils. They swim slowly over the corals while the cleaning fish come to eat the parasites. Manta rays reach their sexual maturitea between 6 and 10 years of age. They give birth once every two years. They are ovoviviparous species, so after mating, the formed egg develop in the female ' s body until it hatches. Gestation last twelve to thirteen months and a fully formed pup (rarely two ) is expelle, measuring between 130 and 150 cm. From that moment on, its mother stops feeding it and it is indepandent. It will double in size within a year. The bigest threat to these fish is overfishing and bycatch. Although they are long-lived but slow to reproduce, the species struggle to recover when caught. Since 2011, manta rays are protected in international waters by the Convention on Migratory Species. Let ' s leave these marine animals and return to the idyllic landscape of the atoll with its white sandy beaches, bathed by calm turquoise waters with a few bungalow on stilts in the distance. |
