Manta ID Palau Database Continues to Grow – Latest News From NECO Marine

Published 12 years agoon February 7, 2014

The Etpison Museum, with sponsorship from NECO Marine and Palau Pacific Resort and also with the assistance of visiting divers and local dive guides, has been building a database called www.mantaidpalau.org to collect information on Palau’s individual mantas and how many are visiting Palau’s reefs every year.

Manta rays have black markings on their bellies that are like fingerprints which makes each individual easy to identify. So far, over 250 manta rays have been photo ID’d in Palau since 2010.

The latest additions since October 2013 have been 14 males and 2 females that have been seen around the Lighthouse, Ulong, German Channel and Babelomekang areas.

M109 Ranger was seen during a fieldtrip hosted by NECO Marine for the Koror State Rangers to do a site management and mooring buoy evaluation of the German Channel site.

F129 Madrei was the first pregnant female seen this season in January 2014, and was being chased by 9 males. Mantas often mate just after giving birth, and “courtship trains” of several males chasing a female are often seen between December and February in Palau. The female eventually will choose a male, and he will shadow her every move until they mate.

A new baby male was also found: M117 Mutok.

Manta ID Palau also encourage divers to share their photographs of mantas not shown on the database.

If you would like to learn how to identify the mantas and to position yourself underwater so not to scare them away, NECO Marine offers a PADI dive specialty course: “Manta Identification Diver Palau”, a two day course where you can find out more about Palau’s manta rays and how best to observe them. Specialty Instructor Fabio Esposito will be teaching the course, and says he would like to see all the dive guides in Palau give better briefings to their guests about the mantas, and especially how to behave around them so as not to disturb their feeding and cleaning behavior.