Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday, so we have
Speaker 1: a vault episode for you. This is going to be
Speaker 1: the Manta Ray Part one. This one originally published July one,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. This is going to be part one
Speaker 1: of three. This one is a tremendous amount of fun
Speaker 1: to research and record, so we hope that you enjoy it,
Speaker 1: either for the first time or for the second time.
Speaker 1: Here let's dive right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. In
Speaker 1: this episode, we're going to begin our look at the
Speaker 1: Manta ray because I very recently we had the privilege
Speaker 1: to travel with my family to raja Ampat in Indonesia
Speaker 1: for a week of snorkeling, and during that snorkeling, I
Speaker 1: got to observe manta rays while in the water snorkeling,
Speaker 1: and it was just a mind blowing experience. It was
Speaker 1: just magical. I can't quite put it into words exactly,
Speaker 1: but it was one of these situations where as I
Speaker 1: was snorkeling out with the other snorkelers towards this manta
Speaker 1: ray cleaning station. I found myself like mouthing, oh my god,
Speaker 1: oh my God through my breathing apparatus.
Speaker 3: The cleaning station is that, do I understand?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: That's a place where they come to sort of be
Speaker 3: be swarmed by fish that will help get parasites or
Speaker 3: other kind of contaminants off of their bodies.
Speaker 1: Correct, This is This is pretty remarkable in its own right,
Speaker 1: and I think we'll get into that more in the
Speaker 1: second episode of this series. But yes, that's what we
Speaker 1: were observing. These were some reef manta rays that had
Speaker 1: come out to the cleaning station so that these various
Speaker 1: fish could eat their parasites. And yeah, it was just
Speaker 1: magical to watch these creatures move through the water like
Speaker 1: some sort of animate black and white cape, you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of an angel or demon, just something almost
Speaker 1: beyond our ability to comprehend.
Speaker 3: It's a bach coming in on the organ as they
Speaker 3: swish around.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they're very very dramatic, but also we'll be
Speaker 1: discussing relatively drama free at least as far as what
Speaker 1: they're doing and what they're bringing to the table. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of manta ray drama, but it's almost entirely
Speaker 1: on us, the humans. Yeah, so I want to mention
Speaker 1: up here at the top that we did this snorkeling
Speaker 1: at the Missoul Marine Reserve is also where you find
Speaker 1: the Missoul Resort. The resort is just one leg of
Speaker 1: the overall conservation mission here, which actually started before the
Speaker 1: tourism part of the operation, like the tourism part apparently
Speaker 1: was then built up afterwards to fund the conservation mission.
Speaker 1: And I can't say enough good things about this place.
Speaker 1: Founded on the site of a former shark finning camp
Speaker 1: and in an area that had been previously targeted by
Speaker 1: illegal lumber operations and dynamite fishing, and now through the
Speaker 1: Missoul Foundation, they manage about three hundred thousand acres or
Speaker 1: twelve two hundred square kilometers of marine reserve with two
Speaker 1: distinct no take zones. They engage in various conservation efforts
Speaker 1: such as the Missoul Manta Program, a Reshark program, and
Speaker 1: this includes a program to reintroduce Indo Pacific leopard sharks,
Speaker 1: and they partner with various organizations of various like aquariums
Speaker 1: around the world who have the right eggs egg secs
Speaker 1: to reintroduce, and their partners include Atlanta Zone Georgia Aquarium.
Speaker 1: They're also involved in coral refrustoration, sustainability efforts in various
Speaker 1: community outreach and education programs.
Speaker 3: So you said you were doing a lot of snorkeling here.
Speaker 3: I know y'all are a snorkeling family, right, I have
Speaker 3: no experience with this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, my wife got us into it, and you know,
Speaker 1: we'll go on snorkeling excursions here and there, and I
Speaker 1: have to say, yeah, this is the best snorkeling of
Speaker 1: my life thus far. This part of the world is
Speaker 1: in what's known as the Coral Triangle. This is an
Speaker 1: incredibly rich and diverse marine environment that happens to include
Speaker 1: according to the NAA, quote over six hundred reef building
Speaker 1: coral species, seventy five percent of all species known to science,
Speaker 1: three thousand species of reef fish, forty percent of the
Speaker 1: world's coral reef species, and six of the world's seven
Speaker 1: marine turtle species. Also three quarters of known molluscs.
Speaker 3: So it's happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's yeah, just a very very rich place. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'll no doubt come back to other things.
Speaker 1: I observed there in future episodes, but one of the
Speaker 1: many highlights again was getting to observe these reef manta
Speaker 1: rays in the wild. So we'll get back to the
Speaker 1: details of the different the two main different mantes species,
Speaker 1: but this is the second largest of the rays and
Speaker 1: one of only two, possibly three extant manta rays species.
Speaker 1: They can weigh up to fifteen hundred pounds or seven
Speaker 1: hundred kilograms, and that's with a maximum disc width of
Speaker 1: fifteen feet or four hundred and fifty centimeters if you
Speaker 1: were I guess you could sort of frame that as
Speaker 1: their wingspan if you want.
Speaker 3: But you said, so, these are the reef mantas, and
Speaker 3: the largest of the manta rays would be the giant
Speaker 3: oceanic mantas, correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we'll come back to the stats on them
Speaker 1: in a minute. But yeah, in both cases, great bat
Speaker 1: like black and white creatures that seem to glide and
Speaker 1: soar through the depths. And I think I had observed
Speaker 1: some in the water while standing on a sandbar elsewhere
Speaker 1: in the world previously, but this was my first and
Speaker 1: only time getting to see them while in the water,
Speaker 1: and again it was just astounding.
Speaker 3: So I have no experience with snorkeling. But in reading
Speaker 3: up for this episode, I just kept coming across first
Speaker 3: hand descriptions again and again of how strange and amazing
Speaker 3: it was to be in the water with manta rays.
Speaker 3: A common thing these divers and researchers talk about is
Speaker 3: a feeling of kind of intelligent or almost emotional connection
Speaker 3: with the animal that they have not experienced with any
Speaker 3: other fish. Because, to be clear, the manta is not
Speaker 3: like a mammal like dolphins or whales might be that
Speaker 3: you might be more you know, disposed, you might have
Speaker 3: more experience hearing about these kind of connections people have
Speaker 3: with marine mammals. But these are fish, you know, we
Speaker 3: think of them as these very kind of cold creatures
Speaker 3: of limited intelligence, kind of like sharks that seem to
Speaker 3: be mainly just kind of machines acting on impulse. They
Speaker 3: don't have that feeling of emotion and intelligence you might
Speaker 3: get from a mammal. But in this case, this is
Speaker 3: a fish that lots of people say, does it does
Speaker 3: have that feeling. It's like it's there and it's alive,
Speaker 3: and it's thinking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a great point, And I think we'll
Speaker 1: probably get into the intel the brain, the intelligence of
Speaker 1: the manta ray, especially in the next episode. But but
Speaker 1: you do see this observation a lot. There seems to
Speaker 1: be a curiosity on the part of the manta and
Speaker 1: in many ways, this kind of curiosity reminds us of
Speaker 1: our interactions with mammalian marine species like dolphins and whales. Now,
Speaker 1: in the case of our own experiences, I want to
Speaker 1: stress that we observe them while snorkeling, rather than say
Speaker 1: that we swam with them. I guess you could technically
Speaker 1: say we swam them with them. We were in the
Speaker 1: same but the body of water with them, but we
Speaker 1: did keep our distance. We did not chase the manta rays,
Speaker 1: and we certainly did not attempt attempt to touch these
Speaker 1: gentle giants of the sea.
Speaker 3: I assume that's discouraged.
Speaker 1: It is discouraged, yes, And in discussing this, like the
Speaker 1: human desire to touch the manta ray, I wanted to
Speaker 1: get into a preliminary discussion here about the human attitude
Speaker 1: toward the manta ray because this is important because ultimately
Speaker 1: human attitudes towards the manta rays also plays into their
Speaker 1: endangered status in the world, certainly with the oceanic manta.
Speaker 1: So manta rays enjoy a pretty wide range. They're found
Speaker 1: in warm, temperate, subtropical and tropical waters around the world.
Speaker 1: As such, humans and coastal areas within their range have
Speaker 1: known about them for a very long time. Hawaiian, Micronesian,
Speaker 1: Southeast Asian, and South American traditions have viewed the manta
Speaker 1: in varying supernatural lights, as reincarnations of human souls, as
Speaker 1: avatars of a creator deity, as divine protectors, as divine messengers,
Speaker 1: and as such, they've even enjoyed traditional protected status amongst
Speaker 1: certain groups, at least at different times. But there's also
Speaker 1: a darker side to human attitudes toward manta rays. Over
Speaker 1: the past couple of decades, the demand for manta ray
Speaker 1: gill plates in traditional medicine, particularly traditional Chinese medicine, has
Speaker 1: proven devastating from manta ray populations. Based on the unproven
Speaker 1: and to be clear of pseudoscientific idea, the consumption of
Speaker 1: these gills in some sort of like powdered driver and
Speaker 1: or powdered form can boost the human immune system, among
Speaker 1: other supposed benefits. And the story of how this is
Speaker 1: really interesting in its own right. I was reading about
Speaker 1: this in a paper by O'Malley at all titled Characterization
Speaker 1: of the Trade in Manta and Devil ray gill plates
Speaker 1: in China and Southeast Asia through Trader Surveys. This was
Speaker 1: published in twenty sixteen in Aquatic Conservation, Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems,
Speaker 1: and they point out that mention of manta gill plates
Speaker 1: didn't pop up in traditional Chinese medicine publications until around
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six. This to be clear, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that traditional Chinese medicine itself is very very old, going
Speaker 1: back like five thousand years, widespread and popular form of
Speaker 1: alternative medicine, but the consumption of these gill plates is
Speaker 1: not some sort of deep seated tradition in this alternative
Speaker 1: medicine practice.
Speaker 3: This would not be the only case that something is
Speaker 3: presented as a traditional or ancient cure from some culture
Speaker 3: or other when it is not. It is a fairly
Speaker 3: recent thing people have started doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of my key sources for these episodes is
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen's Guide to the Manta and Devil Rays of
Speaker 1: the World by Stevens, Fernando Dando, and Dyscaria. And in
Speaker 1: this book, which I'll keep coming back to, they say
Speaker 1: that this was all likely a quote clever marketing of
Speaker 1: a readily available and cheap bycatch product. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: various unsustainable fishing practices would be pulling mantas in any way,
Speaker 1: and then they're like, well, let's market the parts of
Speaker 1: this creature and sell it. And then as popularity builds,
Speaker 1: it translates into direct targeting of mantas by what they
Speaker 1: describe as boom and bust fisheries. So, for reasons we'll
Speaker 1: discuss in these episodes, these are vulnerable species that do
Speaker 1: not easily endure this sort of targeted fishing, so these
Speaker 1: operations inherently produce very short lived paydays while doing long
Speaker 1: term damage to the populations. They also note that the
Speaker 1: rise in popularity may also tie in with the rise
Speaker 1: in human respiratory illnesses do in part to pollution, and
Speaker 1: again these pseudoscientific claims. Basically we're dealing with the idea that, Okay,
Speaker 1: these are filters for the fish, and therefore, on some level,
Speaker 1: if I consume them, it's going to help filter me
Speaker 1: out as well. It's going to protect me from the
Speaker 1: things that would harm me in the environment. So again,
Speaker 1: gill plates would seem to be a relatively recent addition
Speaker 1: to traditional Chinese medicine, and one that has had a
Speaker 1: marked impact on the populations of these vulnerable fish species.
Speaker 1: The reef manta is currently flagged as vulnerable, while the
Speaker 1: giant oceanic manta is endangered.
Speaker 3: And I would imagine that we can come back to
Speaker 3: this because I'm sure there's more nuance, but I would
Speaker 3: imagine that they are especially vulnerable to heavy fishing and
Speaker 3: harvesting because they're larger species that have a slower reproductive
Speaker 3: schedule exactly.
Speaker 1: And then historically, on top of all of this, there
Speaker 1: are Western European misconceptions and myths about manta rays and
Speaker 1: devil rays, rooted apparently in the observations of sailors, but
Speaker 1: managing to survive well into the early twentieth century and
Speaker 1: manifesting in written fiction as well as in at least
Speaker 1: a couple of early horror films.
Speaker 3: Yes, so, Rob, at your suggestion, I looked these up.
Speaker 3: You sort of gave me an assignment here, and I
Speaker 3: checked these movies out. Strangely, both of these made in
Speaker 3: the nineteen thirties, you know, I think of the the
Speaker 3: seventies through the nineties is kind of the heyday of oh,
Speaker 3: I don't know, killer monster in the ocean movies of course,
Speaker 3: following Jaws, Jaws is the big one, and then you
Speaker 3: get all the Jaws copycats, you know, Orca and everything
Speaker 3: like that, and then even further down the chain until
Speaker 3: like the real kind of Z grade copycats. You know,
Speaker 3: in the nineties and two thousands, there were just ten
Speaker 3: billion direct to video shark movies made.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a great observation, especially since what is it,
Speaker 1: fifty years of Jaws now celebrating a major birthday.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, you can't deny the power of Jaws.
Speaker 3: Like as much as I hate to contribute to the
Speaker 3: demonizing of of ocean creatures, Jaws is just a banger.
Speaker 3: It's a great movie. It is.
Speaker 1: It's a great film. It changed movies forever. You can't
Speaker 1: talk about blockbusters without talking about Jaws. You can't talk
Speaker 1: about monster movies really without talking talking about Jaws. But
Speaker 1: it is interesting in pointing out that films like Jaws
Speaker 1: arise in the nineteen seventies and then various other creatures
Speaker 1: are drawn into the mix. But the seventies seem to
Speaker 1: be the time period during which in the Europeans in
Speaker 1: the West woke up to the idea that, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: manterrays are fine. They're like absolutely not threatening anybody. Not
Speaker 1: only are they not threatening, not actually threatening, it's hard
Speaker 1: to conceive of them being threatening. Like, we can't even
Speaker 1: think about making a monster movie about something so tame.
Speaker 1: We'll make one about the killer rabbits first.
Speaker 3: I feel like the stuff you would get later, like
Speaker 3: in the eighties is movies that had friendly aliens that
Speaker 3: were basically manter ray shaped. I can't even remember what
Speaker 3: movie I'm thinking of, but I can picture it in
Speaker 3: my mind, like a gentle, sort of illuminated, bioluminescent, floating
Speaker 3: manta ray with intelligence that's like communicating with a child
Speaker 3: or something. Does that ring any bells for you?
Speaker 1: Who that one? Not specifically, but I was reading doing
Speaker 1: some additional reading, and there are various examples of creatures
Speaker 1: in sci fi that say, live in the atmosphere of
Speaker 1: Jupiter at least partially based on the manta ray. Oh, like,
Speaker 1: it just has a pleasing ethereal form. Again, it's like
Speaker 1: to the point where it's almost hard for us to
Speaker 1: put ourselves in the mindset of someone who sees a
Speaker 1: manta ray and thinks about it as a relentless killer.
Speaker 3: Oh, the Jupiter when you mentioned rang a Bell, because
Speaker 3: we just talked about the story in our series on
Speaker 3: the Great Storm the big Red Spot of Jupiter, because
Speaker 3: that was in a meeting with Medusa by Arthur C. Clark.
Speaker 3: One of the aliens they meet. There is like a
Speaker 3: giant manta ray in the atmosphere of Jupiter. But anyway,
Speaker 3: we got it, okay, So we got to talk about
Speaker 3: these manta horror movies from the nineteen thirties, neither of
Speaker 3: which exactly lives up to that promise, but they're both
Speaker 3: kind of marketed that way. So one of these movies
Speaker 3: is called The Sea Bat Sea, not c the letter
Speaker 3: Sea Bat Sea Bat from nineteen thirty This is a
Speaker 3: pre code American romantic melodrama directed by Wesley Ruggles. Apparently,
Speaker 3: in early production, Todd Browning was somehow attached to this
Speaker 3: and it was maybe supposed to be a vehicle featuring
Speaker 3: Lon Cheney, but that never worked out. So this was
Speaker 3: directed by Wesley Ruggles, shot in Mexico, starring Charles Bickford,
Speaker 3: Raquel Torres, and Nil's Astor, and it even has Boris
Speaker 3: Karloff in a small role. This came out a year
Speaker 3: before Karloff's big break in Frankenstein that was thirty one.
Speaker 3: So this is set on an island in the Caribbean
Speaker 3: and the story follows a character named Nina played by
Speaker 3: Mexican actress Raquel Torres, who is either in love with
Speaker 3: or is the sister of, depending on which synopsis you read.
Speaker 3: I was not able to watch this movie before recording today.
Speaker 3: Is either in love with or is the sister of
Speaker 3: a sponge diver named Carl. Sadly, Carl is killed when
Speaker 3: his diving party is attacked by a dreaded local creature
Speaker 3: known as the sea bat, and this is described in
Speaker 3: some sources as a giant manta ray, in other sources
Speaker 3: as a sting ray, which, as we'll discuss more throughout
Speaker 3: the series, that those are not the same thing, though
Speaker 3: some publications describing the movie seem not to recognize that
Speaker 3: there is a difference. I think they just think, like
Speaker 3: Mantrey's arsting rays, same thing. In some effects shots you
Speaker 3: can see it really doesn't look like either one rob
Speaker 3: I put one screenshot in here for you. There are
Speaker 3: shots of it underwater where it I don't know, it's
Speaker 3: shaped kind of like an airplane or like a spaceship
Speaker 3: of some kind, and then there are some shots where
Speaker 3: you see it at the water line and it looks
Speaker 3: just more like a giant shark or tuna type creature. Anyway,
Speaker 3: after the tragic loss of Carl in this seabat related incident,
Speaker 3: the character Nina starts getting into voodoo and then declares
Speaker 3: that she will marry any man who can kill the
Speaker 3: dreaded sea bat. Several men try and fail, and then
Speaker 3: eventually a traveling preacher named Reverend Sims comes to town.
Speaker 3: This is Charles Bickford, and he somehow both converts Nina
Speaker 3: to Christianity. He leads her out of were packed with
Speaker 3: voodoo and falls in love with her, and it's a
Speaker 3: tragic romance, I guess, or I don't know how tragic.
Speaker 3: I think. They do end up happily together at the end.
Speaker 3: But there is a twist because it turns out Reverend
Speaker 3: Sims is actually an escaped convict pretending to be a minister.
Speaker 3: And then some of Nina's other jealous suitors try to
Speaker 3: capture him and turn him in for the bounty. But
Speaker 3: on the way there they're like on a boat, and
Speaker 3: the boat gets attacked by the sea bat, so they
Speaker 3: get sea batted, but Reverend Sims survives and he goes
Speaker 3: back to Nina, and I guess they live happily ever after.
Speaker 3: That's what I could piece together reading various synopsis online
Speaker 3: from the American Film Institute Catalog's historical entry on the movie.
Speaker 3: I just wanted to read a couple of production notes
Speaker 3: because they factor into the stingray or Manta ray discussion. Quote.
Speaker 3: According to the Telegraph News, the movie, with its crew
Speaker 3: of sixty two personnel, was quote believed to be the
Speaker 3: largest motion picture expedition to leave Hollywood for another American country.
Speaker 3: The production required three pullmans and two baggage cars with
Speaker 3: two hundred tons of equipment, and an inventory of articles
Speaker 3: taken into Mexico under customs bond covered by more than
Speaker 3: one thousand pages and showed a total value of eighty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars. The article also claimed that the titular subject
Speaker 3: of the film, the Giant Stingray, was filmed for the
Speaker 3: first time in the sea bat.
Speaker 1: The giant stingray, Now, I'm not sure where that would
Speaker 1: be that there is a giant freshwater stingray, but I
Speaker 1: think this is a creature you find in touch tanks.
Speaker 1: This is not in captivity. I don't think this is
Speaker 1: something that is going to be that threatening.
Speaker 3: And once again, like I said, I couldn't watch the
Speaker 3: whole movie, but in the clips I saw, there were
Speaker 3: two different ways the sea bat looked, and neither of
Speaker 3: them looked like a real animal anyway. Not clear if
Speaker 3: anybody involved here knew the difference between a stingray and
Speaker 3: a manta ray, which is rob cee if you follow
Speaker 3: me here. I think that's somewhat common. Bolt of the
Speaker 3: difference between like a great white shark and a whale shark,
Speaker 3: like pretty different organisms. One's a filter feeder, the others
Speaker 3: a predator right right.
Speaker 1: And even then with the sting right that, I think
Speaker 1: there's depending on what type of stingray, you have different
Speaker 1: forms of feeding that are taking place.
Speaker 3: But yeah, essentially many reviewers of Sea Bat also say
Speaker 3: not enough sea bat seabat sequences are limited, And yeah,
Speaker 3: so in the in the scene I did see of
Speaker 3: it chasing the boat, it's like attacking the boat as
Speaker 3: they're out on the water. It's basically jaws. The creature
Speaker 3: looks like a cross between kind of like a sting ray,
Speaker 3: but also like a shark and kind of a giant
Speaker 3: silver tuna type thing. The other killer Manta movie that
Speaker 3: you flagged for me is The Devil Monster, which was
Speaker 3: released in several different years. There was a nineteen thirty
Speaker 3: six version nineteen forty six version, also known as The
Speaker 3: Sea Fiend. This is yet another production at least somewhat
Speaker 3: marketed as ray horror, but it actually features relatively little
Speaker 3: on screen ray action. So it was first made in
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty six, re edited and re released multiple times,
Speaker 3: including in nineteen forty six when it was beefed up
Speaker 3: with a bunch of exploitation content, which included footage of
Speaker 3: what appears to be sadly genuine animal cruelty, like forcing
Speaker 3: live animals to fight each other, and then also stock
Speaker 3: documentary footage of Native Pacific islanders just going about their
Speaker 3: daily life included, no doubt, because this was a way
Speaker 3: around Hayes Code prohibitions on nudity at the time. This
Speaker 3: was directed by s Edwin Graham. The basic plot of
Speaker 3: the nineteen forty six version is about a mission to
Speaker 3: find a missing sailor whose ship was wrecked on the Galapagos.
Speaker 3: Though apparently huge stretches of the movie take a break
Speaker 3: from the main narrative to just show octopus fights or
Speaker 3: topless women processing grain, and the climax has several characters
Speaker 3: forced to battle a giant manta ray that is said
Speaker 3: to be a threat to the local tuna fishermen. So
Speaker 3: once again, you got you got a monster manta ray
Speaker 3: the monster. So I looked at this part where they're
Speaker 3: battling the ray, and it does look much more clearly
Speaker 3: like a ray. Unfortunately, I think in this case that's
Speaker 3: because it is a real manta ray, and the film's
Speaker 3: action climax is just an unsimulated harpooning of a real animal.
Speaker 1: Oh well, that's that's quite unfortunate.
Speaker 3: So from a distance, I'm going to give a preemptive
Speaker 3: thumbs down to both of these movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think either of these are are contenders
Speaker 1: for weird house cinema treatment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it does raise this question, like because it's
Speaker 3: framing them, framing rays as this monster that attacks humans
Speaker 3: and you know, threatens boats and all. This was it
Speaker 3: common before the modern era to view manta rays as
Speaker 3: a kind of monster, or at least a potentially dangerous
Speaker 3: animal like its cousins the predatory sharks.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And yes, I did find evidence that this was just
Speaker 3: kind of common sailor's lore that rays would you know,
Speaker 3: could be dangerous attack you, They might attack boats, they
Speaker 3: might attack divers. One article I came across that was
Speaker 3: recounting some of this folklore was from nineteen ten by
Speaker 3: the American biologist Theodore Gill. It's called the Story of
Speaker 3: the Devilfish. That name can be a little confusing because
Speaker 3: the term devilfish or devil ray is still used today
Speaker 3: to refer to a number of species within the genus Mobula,
Speaker 3: and that is the genus to which the manta rays belong. Basically,
Speaker 3: manta rays are the largest couple of species within the
Speaker 3: genus Mobula, and then some of the other species within
Speaker 3: the genus Mobula are often called like devil rays or devilfish.
Speaker 3: But the term, I think also is still sometimes used
Speaker 3: to refer to just the rays in this genome more generally,
Speaker 3: so I know that's confusing. I think the lower Gill
Speaker 3: is talking about in this article probably does not observe
Speaker 3: distinctions between devil rays and manta rays as we would
Speaker 3: sort them today. It's probably just sailors are looking at
Speaker 3: this thing's based manta ray shaped. These things probably look
Speaker 3: mostly the same to sailors. That's got you know, it's
Speaker 3: got the wings, and it's got something that looks like
Speaker 3: horns in the front, and it's big. So that's one
Speaker 3: of these devilfish or devil rays. Gil in the beginning
Speaker 3: of this article attests to common associations made between what
Speaker 3: he calls the great ray and devils, vampires, and bats,
Speaker 3: and he mentions that common names include the sea bat
Speaker 3: like in the movie. And then concerning these associations with bats,
Speaker 3: he's quoting another author named Holder, and he writes, quote
Speaker 3: Holder thought that quote no more diabolical creature could be imagined.
Speaker 3: They resembled enormous bats, and in following one another around
Speaker 3: the circle, raised the outer tip of the long wing
Speaker 3: like fin high out of the water in a graceful curve,
Speaker 3: the other being deeply submerged. But then Gil goes on
Speaker 3: to say, quote another name for the monster ray has
Speaker 3: been borrowed from the Spanish. Among the fishermen and especially
Speaker 3: the pearl divers of Central America and western Mexico, it
Speaker 3: is known as the manta. This is a Spanish term
Speaker 3: meaning originally blanket, and was given by the fishermen in
Speaker 3: parts of Spain and the island of Mallorca to a
Speaker 3: species of the Mediterranean, and extended thence to similar fishes
Speaker 3: of other regions. It has been explained that the name
Speaker 3: was given by the Spaniards of America to the devilfish
Speaker 3: because it was alleged to hover over and cover a
Speaker 3: fisherman at the bottom as a blanket preparatory to killing
Speaker 3: him for good. The belief, indeed, that the devilfish may
Speaker 3: so attack a man, is not only widely spread, but
Speaker 3: of an ancient origin. Such an idea, however, is contrary
Speaker 3: to our knowledge of the fish. Like several other of
Speaker 3: the gigantic sealations, its diet is in almost inverse ratio
Speaker 3: to its size. So already in nineteen ten, Theodore Ghill
Speaker 3: is not going for the lord that the rays fold
Speaker 3: down like a death blanket over the divers to cover
Speaker 3: them on the bottom and prepare them for death. But
Speaker 3: I did want to say I think he is sort
Speaker 3: of onto something when commenting about the idea of the
Speaker 3: diet being in almost inverse ratio to its size. This
Speaker 3: is not like a hard and fast rule, and there
Speaker 3: are very big, active predators that prey on large animals.
Speaker 3: But many of the largest animals in the ocean, and
Speaker 3: the largest species within different marine lineages, are filter feeders,
Speaker 3: feeding entirely on tiny organisms and small bits of organic matter.
Speaker 3: And this is true of course of the giant oceanic
Speaker 3: manta ray. Now why would that be If you have
Speaker 3: a big filter feeding surface and basically like a big
Speaker 3: kind of bowl shaped mouth that functions like a sieve,
Speaker 3: and a big body that can store a lot of
Speaker 3: energy for time in between feeding booms, it can be
Speaker 3: an awesomely efficient way to live, and with a large
Speaker 3: body yourself, you don't need to worry a whole lot
Speaker 3: about predators. From what I've been reading, the only real
Speaker 3: predators of the giant oceanic manta rays are humans, of course,
Speaker 3: and maybe some toothed whales like orcas, and I think
Speaker 3: sharks may sometimes bite them as well, but I understand
Speaker 3: sharks are not major predators for giant mantas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll come back to this, but basically that's the case,
Speaker 1: but with some variations depending on exactly where in the
Speaker 1: world you are, Like the actually what the surrounding environment
Speaker 1: is consisting of, and you know where the mantas are living.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So in general that there are a lot of
Speaker 3: upsides to being a big filter feeding organism. If you're big,
Speaker 3: you don't have to worry much about predators. You don't
Speaker 3: have to be all that like fast or dangerous or anything.
Speaker 3: You just kind of have to like cruise around with
Speaker 3: a big filter feeding surface, scoop in a lot of stuff,
Speaker 3: just take it all in and get huge amounts of
Speaker 3: biomassing going straight into your metabolism, and then store a
Speaker 3: lot of it for later. That's another thing that people
Speaker 3: often don't think about about the advantages of having a
Speaker 3: big body by a lot. You know, you think, well,
Speaker 3: it's good to be bigger if you're in a fight.
Speaker 3: I mean sometimes that's true, yes, but it's also just
Speaker 3: like you've got a big freezer. Basically you can store
Speaker 3: a lot of energy in that body.
Speaker 1: But of course a big part of this is in
Speaker 1: doing this as an organism, you become a specialist. Right.
Speaker 3: So if you're a giant manta ray and you come
Speaker 3: across some divers in the water, I mean those divers
Speaker 3: might be delicious and full of nutrition, but you just
Speaker 3: there's nothing much you can do with them. Like, you
Speaker 3: don't even have the tools really to eat that diver
Speaker 3: if you wanted to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that ship sailed long ago. Well, one can only
Speaker 1: imagine that this is based perhaps on the fact that,
Speaker 1: of course they're big, and it's natural for a human
Speaker 1: being in the water outside of their element to be
Speaker 1: a little spooked by large fish. I mean, that's common
Speaker 1: you encounter, that's snorkeling. I feel, unless I know for
Speaker 1: certain what I'm looking at, I would be a little
Speaker 1: nervous around a large fish in the water. And then
Speaker 1: on top of that, we have this we've already talked
Speaker 1: about how there are observations of manta rays being curious
Speaker 1: concerning humans, Manta rays more than devil rays, I'm to understand,
Speaker 1: But that would of course add to it. If you're
Speaker 1: already a little nervous around a big animal and it
Speaker 1: is even halfway curious about you, that might also lead
Speaker 1: to this kind of conclusion.
Speaker 3: Right, And while manta rays are very well known for
Speaker 3: not being aggressive towards humans, I mean, it would still
Speaker 3: be totally possible for one to just like injure you
Speaker 3: by accident if you're getting too close. I mean, they're
Speaker 3: big animals, you know, Yeah, and roll over, so like
Speaker 3: you just you know, keep your distance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's my understanding that as far as any
Speaker 1: kind of like recorded accounts of even minor injuries concerning
Speaker 1: manta rays and injuries to human beings, it's involved people
Speaker 1: getting too close to them, trying to ride them, and
Speaker 1: so forth, which you are not supposed to do.
Speaker 3: So, despite their reputation as diabolical, you know, vampire bats
Speaker 3: of the sea, or as some kind of underwater death blanket, no,
Speaker 3: giant mant rays or mantrays generally devil rays as well,
Speaker 3: are generally not to be thought of as a threat
Speaker 3: to humans. Generally not very aggressive and not anything to
Speaker 3: be all that concerned about. But there is one other
Speaker 3: thing I came across in Gill's article that really does
Speaker 3: paint a kind of scary picture, not because of the
Speaker 3: ray doing anything threatening, but just because of the sonic
Speaker 3: atmosphere it creates. And this is Gil describing the experience
Speaker 3: of what it's like to be around one of these
Speaker 3: giant rays jumping out of the water, which they often do,
Speaker 3: so Gil writes, quote, it is the great leaps out
Speaker 3: of the water that are most striking, especially during the
Speaker 3: stillness of the night Holder on such an occasion on
Speaker 3: the outer FLOORI to reef first encountered the fish and
Speaker 3: then quoting Holder, he says, quote, there came out of
Speaker 3: the darkness near at hand, a rushing, swishing noise, then
Speaker 3: a clap as of thunder, which seemed to go roaring
Speaker 3: and reverberating away over the reef like the discharge of
Speaker 3: a cannon. Not hard to imagine how that could engender
Speaker 3: a sense of fear about this animal.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The authors of Guide to Manta and Devil Rays of
Speaker 1: the World, Stevens aid all they mentioned that if you're
Speaker 1: in the water when this happens, you definitely feel it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Mantas and devils devil rays all engage in
Speaker 1: leaping behavior like this, sometimes several meters out of the water,
Speaker 1: and it's unknown exactly why they do it, which I
Speaker 1: guess is similar to other fish which we've talked about
Speaker 1: on the show in the past. But the predominant theories
Speaker 1: involve either the dislodging of parasites, and as we'll discuss
Speaker 1: and I think the next episode we do on mantas,
Speaker 1: they geary a pretty large parasite load. The other possibility
Speaker 1: is communication. Now the authors note that this would mean
Speaker 1: there's much more to their social interaction than is often thought.
Speaker 1: But the basic hypothesis here is that these different mobilid species,
Speaker 1: especially the manta, they slap back down on the surface
Speaker 1: of the water, and in doing so they create a
Speaker 1: pressure wave this thunderclap that you reference, that could then
Speaker 1: be detected by other arrays of the same species miles away.
Speaker 1: Given that they're often observed leaping before feeding, they could
Speaker 1: be alerting other mantas to a feeding opportunity.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, okay.
Speaker 1: And why would they do that, because that's why would
Speaker 1: you want to tell the other rays about all this
Speaker 1: great food you just found? Well, the authors point out,
Speaker 1: because food is plentiful, but the opportunity itself to feed
Speaker 1: is fleeting, subject to the tides and so forth. So
Speaker 1: the signal might be to bring in as many fellow
Speaker 1: rays as possible to engage in group feeding strategies, which
Speaker 1: we'll get into in a bit here that also increase
Speaker 1: individual food halls. So you know, let's all do it
Speaker 1: while the getting's good. Let's all feed together and we'll
Speaker 1: all feast.
Speaker 3: Ah interesting okay.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, some devil rays might
Speaker 1: engage in breaching is a fitness signal for mating. But
Speaker 1: again that's again that's a hypothesis based on just how
Speaker 1: it seems to time with other things that they're doing
Speaker 1: in the water. At any rate, as we giving back
Speaker 1: to human sentiments, manta rays and the idea that their
Speaker 1: vampiric death blankets and so forth, Western sentiments seem to
Speaker 1: turn in a major way during the nineteen seventies despite
Speaker 1: the Jaws movies, with exposure to the reality that manta
Speaker 1: rays are anything but the devilfish of a sailor's legend.
Speaker 1: They are the epitome of a gentle giant, indifferent or
Speaker 1: even curious considering humans in the water, and not aggressive
Speaker 1: at all. Again, I think the rare cases you'll find
Speaker 1: of people being injured at all by a manta are
Speaker 1: because they were intentionally trying to get way too close
Speaker 1: to them, and as far as the harvesting of their
Speaker 1: gills goes, Manta tourism has apparently been a major factor
Speaker 1: thus far in the fight against this practice. People around
Speaker 1: the world continue to spend a lot of money to
Speaker 1: observe manta rays in the wild. In that twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: guide to Devil Rays of the World Book, The authors
Speaker 1: share that at the time of its publication, the global
Speaker 1: estimate for direct revenue generated by manta tourism with something
Speaker 1: like seventy three million annually, with associated tourism revenue pushing
Speaker 1: that up to like one hundred and forty million annually.
Speaker 1: So all of that basically translates to the realization that
Speaker 1: if manta tourism is in the mix, a live manta
Speaker 1: ray is worth far more than a dead one, and
Speaker 1: so manta tourism, like a lot of marine tourism, plays
Speaker 1: an important role in manta conservation. At the same time,
Speaker 1: of course, there's a careful balance there, right, because you
Speaker 1: want people to be excited about the mantas. You want
Speaker 1: people to come out and see the manta, spend money
Speaker 1: on the mantas and thus helping to protect them. But
Speaker 1: also you want to avoid detrimental side effects. You know
Speaker 1: that can occur in a number of forms. You don't
Speaker 1: want divers and snorkelers getting way too close to the animals.
Speaker 1: You also don't want unsustainable practices at resorts and on
Speaker 1: liver boards and so forth. You know, the ships are
Speaker 1: going to take divers and snorkelers out to see these creatures.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to walk that line. I think
Speaker 1: in my understanding is that everyone involved continues to figure
Speaker 1: out exactly where that line falls. So at this point
Speaker 1: I thought we'd run through some basics about manta rays
Speaker 1: and some associated devil rays to finish out this episode.
Speaker 1: So mantis and devil rays belong to a group collectively
Speaker 1: known as the mobulids of the family mobili day zooming
Speaker 1: out their rays of the order mileobataforms, which contains twelve
Speaker 1: families three hundred and seventy species of rays, including sting
Speaker 1: rays of various species. Moboloids are most closely related to
Speaker 1: eagle rays and clown nose rays of this order, which
Speaker 1: are bottom feeders. They sift for mollusks and crustaceans on
Speaker 1: the seabed. Moboloids, however, have adapted to pelagic filter feeding
Speaker 1: in the open water, similar to the evolutionary path we
Speaker 1: see with like baleen whales and whale sharks. You know,
Speaker 1: as we've been discussing, like specialize in feeding on all
Speaker 1: the little things in the water. Eat the cloud if
Speaker 1: you will, yes, So they use their mouths and modified
Speaker 1: gill plates in their filter feeding. The devil ray that
Speaker 1: we've been discussing. These are much smaller. There are a
Speaker 1: few different varieties, with the largest I believe being the
Speaker 1: Chilean devil ray or sickle fin devil ray. It has
Speaker 1: a maximum disc width of eleven point two feet or
Speaker 1: three hundred and forty centimeters, and it can weigh up
Speaker 1: to eight hundred and eighty two pounds or four hundred kilograms.
Speaker 1: The spinetail devil ray is also rather big. I mention
Speaker 1: it because its scientific name is Mobula mobular, which is
Speaker 1: always fun. And again the reef manta ray Mobula alfredi,
Speaker 1: which sounds delicious but it's not on the menu, comes
Speaker 1: in at a maximum disc with of fifteen feet or
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty centimeters and a weight of fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred pounds or seven hundred kilograms. But then again, the
Speaker 1: oceanic manta is the biggest. That's Mobula of bostras, and
Speaker 1: it can reach a disc width of twenty three feet
Speaker 1: or seven hundred centimeters and a weight of up to
Speaker 1: forty four hundred pounds or two thousand kilograms. They are
Speaker 1: the largest of all rays, and actually I'm to understand
Speaker 1: the fifth largest fish. Period. There's also some argument to
Speaker 1: be made for a possible third species of extent manta,
Speaker 1: a Caribbean manta closely related to the oceanic manta, only
Speaker 1: smaller now. In addition to those gill plates, the other
Speaker 1: defining characteristics of the maboloids are their devil horns. That
Speaker 1: certainly seems to lend to this idea that there's some
Speaker 1: sort of evil, vampioic creature. They're like bats, and then
Speaker 1: they have devil horns. These are not horns, of course,
Speaker 1: these are modified cephalic fins. So the rays use these
Speaker 1: special fins to funnel plankton into their mouths during feeding.
Speaker 1: So the gill plates that we were just these are
Speaker 1: supported by five pairs of gill arches. You can see
Speaker 1: these when you see some like wide mouth photographs of
Speaker 1: these various organisms, and each species both slightly different gill
Speaker 1: plate structures to capture particular target prey. We were talking
Speaker 1: about the ratio between the size of the organism and
Speaker 1: the size of the prey. Manta rays, the biggest, have
Speaker 1: gill plates evolved to capture much smaller plectonic prey compared
Speaker 1: to various devil ray species. For example, they're going after
Speaker 1: the real small stuff. Their feeding is really interesting though.
Speaker 1: On top of this, because their bodies are you know,
Speaker 1: we think of them as being largely flat, you know,
Speaker 1: they're kind of flattened out, but as Stevens and co
Speaker 1: authors point out during feeding quote, their once flattened body
Speaker 1: and mouth becomes a giant black hole with the pectoral
Speaker 1: fins serving as wings that power the ray through the water,
Speaker 1: and then the gill plates do the rest. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they expand out, they become this like giant gaping maw
Speaker 1: to just consume all the plankton they can get. And
Speaker 1: so that's the basic strategy. Open your mouth really wide,
Speaker 1: use your cephalic fins to help guide the food into
Speaker 1: the mouth, and then you know, go in a straight line,
Speaker 1: just go straight through the food, you know, eat the cloud.
Speaker 1: But that's just one of eight and possibly nine different
Speaker 1: observed feeding strategies that you see in rays, with only
Speaker 1: half of those being used at least observed in devil rays.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to roll through these because they're they're
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Some are only slight variations based on the
Speaker 1: other ones. But so first of all, you have straight
Speaker 1: straight feeding, so this is usually horizontal, but sometimes it's vertical,
Speaker 1: and the distance depends on prey frequency. So you have
Speaker 1: a cloud of plankton, a big school of plankton or something. Well,
Speaker 1: you just move straight through it, eat it, eat it up,
Speaker 1: swallow it up, and then you do a one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty degree turn at the end and repeat as needed.
Speaker 1: Number two This is manta's only apparently, and it's surface feeding.
Speaker 1: So this is basically straight feeding, except right at the
Speaker 1: surface of the water. All right, all right, now it
Speaker 1: starts getting interesting. Chain feeding. So up to several dozen
Speaker 1: individuals proceeding in a line feeding.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's funny that that would actually work. I would
Speaker 3: imagine the further back you are in the line, maybe
Speaker 3: you're not getting anything. But no, I wonder if going
Speaker 3: through a head kind of creates a vortex, maybe that
Speaker 3: sucks some more things in.
Speaker 1: I think that that might be what's happening. And also
Speaker 1: we just have to remember we're dealing with an abundance
Speaker 1: of food here, and this ties in. This is exactly
Speaker 1: and this is an example of the social feeding technique
Speaker 1: group feeding technique that they might hypothetically be calling other
Speaker 1: mantas to engage in. Okay of next piggyback feeding. So
Speaker 1: this is manta's only and it's actually only been observed
Speaker 1: in reef mantas. So you'll have a smaller manta, usually
Speaker 1: a male, and it finds a larger usually female, matches
Speaker 1: her pace, and it's like stacked on top of her
Speaker 1: and feeds as she feeding in a straight line. And
Speaker 1: sometimes you'll get additional mantas stacked on top of that
Speaker 1: until the bottom most manta swims off and displaces the
Speaker 1: whole stack. All right, here's where it gets a little
Speaker 1: fancy summer salt feeding. So this is where they're going
Speaker 1: in a straight line, and then they'll do a three
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty degree loop in the water while feeding,
Speaker 1: usually just one or two loops out of straight feeding,
Speaker 1: but they might do several dozen continuous summer salts, depending
Speaker 1: I guess on how it's going for them and with
Speaker 1: the plankton. This next one, though, this is where it gets.
Speaker 1: This one gets crazy cyclone feeding. What Yeah, So this
Speaker 1: is apparently reef mantas only at least as far as
Speaker 1: observations go. And it begins as just a line of
Speaker 1: chain feeding straight feeders. But then you know something, something changes.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe it's in just how much planked in
Speaker 1: they're encountering, but the chain loops back on itself to
Speaker 1: form a circle. And now we have a circle of
Speaker 1: mantas feeding, and then more mantas begin to form, to
Speaker 1: join in and become part of the formation, and so
Speaker 1: we end up with a counterclockwise cyclone that might ultimately
Speaker 1: entail one hundred and fifty individuals and it might even
Speaker 1: last up to an hour.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: And again the idea here seems to be that these
Speaker 1: group feeding scenarios, when they're able to pull them together
Speaker 1: like it actually results in a bounty for everyone involved.
Speaker 1: On top of this, we have sideways feeding. This is
Speaker 1: maybe not that fancy. It's just the manta ray doing
Speaker 1: chain feeding or straight feeding, but on their sides. Then
Speaker 1: we have bottom feeding, which I guess you can think
Speaker 1: of as a return to form feeding along the bottom
Speaker 1: like some of the other rays that they're more distantly
Speaker 1: related to. And then a ninth possible feeding technique that
Speaker 1: the authors here observe in devil rays is what they
Speaker 1: call lunge feeding, and that's rapid feeding acceleration into dense
Speaker 1: schools of prey. Again, this would I think only be
Speaker 1: devil rays which are going to be you know, the
Speaker 1: smaller of the species involved here. So mangolods first pop
Speaker 1: up in the fossil records some twenty eight million years
Speaker 1: ago during the Middle Oligocene epoch, So according to stevens
Speaker 1: at All, they're among the most recently evolved of the
Speaker 1: elasmo Bronx. This includes all sharks and battle morphs, so
Speaker 1: you know sharks, rays, and so forth, the various cartilage
Speaker 1: fish swimmers of the oceans. They've evolved to, of course
Speaker 1: become exceptional open water swimmers with sufficient speed bursts of
Speaker 1: up to I believe twenty miles per hour or thirty
Speaker 1: three kilometers per hour. And this was interesting, and I
Speaker 1: have trouble exactly understanding this how this works, but I
Speaker 1: totally believe it. They say that they're flattened shapes apparently
Speaker 1: make it more difficult for predators to bite onto them,
Speaker 1: hold onto them, or certainly to target vital areas that way.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, I wonder how that would work, because I
Speaker 3: would imagine, you know, if you're kind of cookie shaped,
Speaker 3: if you're flat, it might not be that hard to
Speaker 3: take a bite of you. But I wonder if doing
Speaker 3: that you're maybe able to keep your most vital parts
Speaker 3: kind of central So if something does bite you, it
Speaker 3: gets a less vital part of you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like maybe you're more it's more possible that you
Speaker 1: get a bite of a fin or wing if you will. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is something they get in get into in the book.
Speaker 1: They do rapidly heal from serious injuries. The book displays
Speaker 1: a few different rather dramatic examples via photographs of rays
Speaker 1: with clear bites taken out of their fins, out of
Speaker 1: their wings, and then a subsequent photo showing how those
Speaker 1: like massive bites have mostly but you know, imperfectly healed
Speaker 1: at a later observation date. And I mentioned this already,
Speaker 1: but predation rates also seem to depend on particular communities
Speaker 1: and environments. So, for example, the authors of this book
Speaker 1: point out that mantas and Mozambique display far more evidence
Speaker 1: of shark attacks compared to those in the Maldives, where
Speaker 1: less than fifteen percent of mantas show evidence of bites.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think I was specifically reading about off the
Speaker 3: coast of Mozambique, where there was common evidence that mantis
Speaker 3: had been bitten by sharks but had survived the encounter
Speaker 3: because they grew up in the wounds healed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the healing of those wounds also involves some
Speaker 1: of the cleaning fish, which we'll get back to in
Speaker 1: the next episode we do on mantas. All right, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to go and close this episode of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, but we're going to be back.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's going to be this week. I
Speaker 1: think it's going to be next week based on the
Speaker 1: way the schedules coming together. But we'll be back with
Speaker 1: at least one more episode on the Manta Ray. If
Speaker 1: not a couple, we'll just see how it comes together.
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