Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick. In
Speaker 2: this episode, we're going to begin our look at the
Speaker 2: manta ray because I very recently had the privilege to
Speaker 2: travel with my family to Raja Ampat in Indonesia for
Speaker 2: a week of snorkeling. And during that snorkeling, I got
Speaker 2: to observe manta rays while in the water snorkeling, and
Speaker 2: it was just a mind blowing experience. It was just magical.
Speaker 2: I can't quite put it into words exactly, but it
Speaker 2: was one of these situations where as I was snorkeling
Speaker 2: out with the other snorkelers towards this manta ray cleaning station,
Speaker 2: I found myself like mouthing, oh my god, oh my
Speaker 2: God through my breathing apparatus.
Speaker 3: The cleaning station is that, do I understand right? That's
Speaker 3: a place where they come to sort of be be
Speaker 3: swarmed by fish that will help get parasites or other
Speaker 3: kind of contaminants off of their bodies.
Speaker 2: Correct. This is this is pretty remarkable in its own right,
Speaker 2: and I think we'll get into that more in the
Speaker 2: second episode of this series. But yes, that's what we
Speaker 2: were observing. These were some reef manta rays that had
Speaker 2: come out to the cleaning station so that these various
Speaker 2: fish could eat their parasites. And yeah, it was just
Speaker 2: magical to watch these creatures move through the water like
Speaker 2: some sort of animate black and white cape, you know,
Speaker 2: some sort of an angel or demon, just something almost
Speaker 2: beyond our ability to comprehend.
Speaker 3: It's a bach coming in on the organ as they
Speaker 3: swish around.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they're very, very dramatic, but also, as we'll
Speaker 2: be discussing, relatively drama free at least as far as
Speaker 2: what they're doing and what they're bringing to the table.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of manta ray drama, but it's it's
Speaker 2: almost entirely on us, the humans. Yeah. So I want
Speaker 2: to mention up here at the top that we did
Speaker 2: this snorkling at the Missoul Marine Reserve. This is also
Speaker 2: where you find the Missoul Resort. The resort is just
Speaker 2: one leg of the overall conservation mission here, which actually
Speaker 2: started before the tourism part of the operation, like the
Speaker 2: tourism part apparently was then built up afterwards to fund
Speaker 2: the conservation mission, and I can't say enough good things
Speaker 2: about this place. Founded on the side of a former
Speaker 2: shark finning camp and in an area that had been
Speaker 2: previously targeted by illegal lumber operations and dynamite fishing, and
Speaker 2: now through the Missoul Foundation, they manage about three hundred
Speaker 2: thousand acres or twelve two hundred square kilometers of marine
Speaker 2: reserve with two distinct no take zones. They engage in
Speaker 2: various conservation efforts, such as the Missoul Manta Program, a
Speaker 2: reshark program, and this includes a program to reintroduce Indo
Speaker 2: Pacific leopard sharks, and they partner with various organizations of
Speaker 2: various like aquariums around the world old who have the
Speaker 2: right eggs egg secs to reintroduce and their partners include
Speaker 2: Atlanta's own Georgia Aquarium. They're also involved in coral reef restoration,
Speaker 2: sustainability efforts in various 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 2: Yeah, yeah, my wife got us into it, and you know,
Speaker 2: we'll go on snorkeling excursions here and there, and I
Speaker 2: have to say, yeah, this is the best snorkeling of
Speaker 2: my life thus far. This part of the world is
Speaker 2: in what's known as the Coral Triangle. This is an
Speaker 2: incredibly rich and diverse marine environment that happens to include,
Speaker 2: according to the NOAA, quote, over six hundred reef building
Speaker 2: coral species, seventy five percent of all species known to science,
Speaker 2: three thousand species of reef fish, forty percent of the
Speaker 2: world's coral reef species, and six of the world's seven
Speaker 2: marine turtle species. Also three quarters of known molluscs.
Speaker 3: So it's happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's yeah, just a very very rich place. And
Speaker 2: you know, I'll no doubt come back to other things
Speaker 2: I observed there in future episodes. But one of the
Speaker 2: many highlights again was getting to observe these reef manta
Speaker 2: rays in the wild. So we'll get back to the
Speaker 2: details of the different the two main different manta species,
Speaker 2: but this is the second largest of the rays and
Speaker 2: one of only two possibly three extant manta ray species.
Speaker 2: They can weigh up to fifteen hundred pounds or seven
Speaker 2: hundred kilograms, and that's with a maximum disc width of
Speaker 2: fifteen feet or four hundred and fifty centimeters if you were.
Speaker 2: I guess you could sort of frame that as their
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: Correct. Yeah, and we'll come back to the stats on
Speaker 2: them in a minute. But yeah, in both cases, great
Speaker 2: bat like black and white creatures that seem to glide
Speaker 2: and soar through the depths. And I think I had
Speaker 2: observed some in the water while standing on a sandbar
Speaker 2: elsewhere in the world previously, but this was my first
Speaker 2: and only time getting to see them while in the water,
Speaker 2: 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 firsthand
Speaker 3: descriptions again and again of how strange and amazing it
Speaker 3: was to be in the water with manta rays. A
Speaker 3: common thing these divers and researchers talk about is a
Speaker 3: feeling of kind of intelligent or almost emotional connection with
Speaker 3: the animal that they have not experienced with any other fish. Because,
Speaker 3: to be clear, the manta is not like a mammal
Speaker 3: like dolphins or whales might be that you might be
Speaker 3: more you know, disposed, you might have more experience hearing
Speaker 3: about these kind of connections people have with marine mammals.
Speaker 3: But these are fish, you know, we think of them
Speaker 3: as these very kind of cold creatures of limited intelligence,
Speaker 3: kind of like sharks that seem to be mainly just
Speaker 3: kind of machines acting on impulse. They don't have that
Speaker 3: feeling of emotion and intelligence you might get from a mammal.
Speaker 3: But in this case, this is a fish that lots
Speaker 3: of people say, does it does have that feeling. It's
Speaker 3: like it's there and it's alive and it's thinking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a great point. And I think we'll
Speaker 2: probably get into the intel, the brain, the intelligence of
Speaker 2: the manta ray, especially in the next episode. But but
Speaker 2: you do see this observation a lot. There seems to
Speaker 2: be a curiosity on the part of the manta, and
Speaker 2: in many ways, this kind of curiosity reminds us of
Speaker 2: our interactions with mammalian marine species like dolphins and whales. Now,
Speaker 2: in the case of our own experiences, I want to
Speaker 2: stress that we observe them while snorkeling, rather than say
Speaker 2: that we swam with them. I guess you could technically
Speaker 2: say we swam them with them. We're in the same
Speaker 2: button body of water with them, but we did keep
Speaker 2: our distance. We did not chase the manta rays, and
Speaker 2: we certainly did not attempt attempt to touch these gentle
Speaker 2: giants of the sea.
Speaker 3: I assume that's discouraged.
Speaker 2: It is discouraged, yes, And in discussing this, like the
Speaker 2: human desire to touch the manta ray, I wanted to
Speaker 2: get into a preliminary discussion here about the human attitudes
Speaker 2: toward the manta ray because this is important because ultimately
Speaker 2: human attitudes towards the manta rays also plays into their
Speaker 2: endangered status in the world, certainly with the oceanic man
Speaker 2: manta so manta rays enjoy a pretty wide range. They're
Speaker 2: found in warm, temperate, subtropical and tropical waters around the world.
Speaker 2: As such, humans and coastal areas within their range have
Speaker 2: known about them for a very long time. Hawaiian, Micronesian,
Speaker 2: Southeast Asian, and South American traditions have viewed the manta
Speaker 2: in varying supernatural life, as reincarnations of human souls, as
Speaker 2: avatars of a creator deity, as divine protectors, as divine messengers,
Speaker 2: and as such, they've even enjoyed traditional protected status amongst
Speaker 2: certain groups, at least at different times. But there's also
Speaker 2: a darker side to human attitudes toward manta rays. Over
Speaker 2: the past couple of decades, the demand for manta ray
Speaker 2: gill plates in traditional medicine, particularly traditional Chinese medicine, has
Speaker 2: proven devastating for manta ray populations. Based on the unproven
Speaker 2: and to be clear of pseudoscientific idea, the consumption of
Speaker 2: these gills in some sort of like powdered driver and
Speaker 2: or powdered form can boost the human immune system, among
Speaker 2: other supposed benefits, and the story of how this is
Speaker 2: really interesting in its own right. I was reading about
Speaker 2: this in a paper by O'Malley at All titled characterization
Speaker 2: of the Trade in Manta and Devil ray gill plates
Speaker 2: in China and Southeast Asia through Trader Surveys, published in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen in Aquatic Conservation, Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems, and
Speaker 2: they point out that mention of manta gill plates didn't
Speaker 2: pop up in traditional Chinese medicine publications until around nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six. This to be clear, despite the fact that
Speaker 2: traditional Chinese medicine itself is very very old, going back
Speaker 2: like five thousand years, a widespread and popular form of
Speaker 2: alternative medicine. But the consumption of these gill plates is
Speaker 2: not some sort of deep seated tradition in this alternative
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah. One of my key sources for these episodes is
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen's Guide to the Manta and Devil Rays of
Speaker 2: the World by Stevens, Fernando Dan, and Dyscaria. And in
Speaker 2: this book, which I'll keep coming back to, they say
Speaker 2: that this was all likely a quote clever marketing of
Speaker 2: a readily available and cheap bycatch product. So, in other words,
Speaker 2: various unsustainable fishing practices would be pulling mantas in any way,
Speaker 2: and then they're like, well, let's market the parts of
Speaker 2: this creature and sell it. And then as popularity builds,
Speaker 2: it translates into direct targeting of mantas by what they
Speaker 2: describe as boom and bust fisheries. So for reasons we'll
Speaker 2: discuss in these episodes. These are vulnerable species that do
Speaker 2: not easily endure this sort of targeted fishing, so these
Speaker 2: operations inherently produce very short lived paydays while doing long
Speaker 2: term damage to the populations. They also note that the
Speaker 2: rise in popularity may also tie in with the rise
Speaker 2: in human respiratory illnesses do in part to pollution, and
Speaker 2: again these pseudoscientific claims. Basically, we're dealing with the idea that, Okay,
Speaker 2: the these are filters for the fish, and therefore, on
Speaker 2: some level, if I consume them, it's going to help
Speaker 2: filter me out as well, it's going to protect me
Speaker 2: from the things that would harm me in the environment.
Speaker 2: So again, gill plates would seem to be a relatively
Speaker 2: recent addition to traditional Chinese medicine and one that has
Speaker 2: had a marked impact on the populations of these vulnerable
Speaker 2: fish species. The reef manta is currently flagged as vulnerable,
Speaker 2: while the 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 2: And then historically, on top of all of this, there
Speaker 2: are Western European misconceptions and myths about manta and devil rays,
Speaker 2: rooted apparently in the observations of sailors, but managing to
Speaker 2: survive well into the early twentieth century and manifesting in
Speaker 2: written fiction as well as in at least a couple
Speaker 2: 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 seventies
Speaker 3: through the nineties as 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 into
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 2: Yeah, that's that is a great observation, especially since what
Speaker 2: is it fifty years of jobs now celebrating a major birthday.
Speaker 3: But yeay, we I mean, you can't deny the power
Speaker 3: of Jaws. Like, as much as I hate to contribute
Speaker 3: to the demonizing of e ocean creatures, Jaws is just
Speaker 3: a banger. It's a great movie.
Speaker 2: It is. It's a great film. It changed movies forever.
Speaker 2: You can't talk about blockbusters without talking about Jaws. You
Speaker 2: can't talk about monster movies really without talking about Jaws.
Speaker 2: But it is interesting in pointing out that films like
Speaker 2: Jaws arise in the nineteen seventies and then various other
Speaker 2: creatures are drawn into the mix. But the seventies seem
Speaker 2: to be the time period during which in the Europeans
Speaker 2: in the West woke up to the idea that, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: manta rays are fine. They're like absolutely not threatening anybody.
Speaker 2: Not only are they not threatening, not actually threatening. It's
Speaker 2: hard to conceive of them being threatening, Like, we can't
Speaker 2: even think about making a monster movie about something so tame.
Speaker 2: 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 shape. 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 who
Speaker 3: that one?
Speaker 2: Not specifically, but I was reading doing some additional reading,
Speaker 2: and there are various examples of creatures in sci fi
Speaker 2: that say, live in the atmosphere of Jupiter. They're at
Speaker 2: least partially based on the mantray. Oh, Like, it just
Speaker 2: has a pleasing ethereal form. Again, it's like to the
Speaker 2: point where it's almost hard for us to put ourselves
Speaker 2: in the mindset of someone who sees a manta ray
Speaker 2: 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 nineteenth 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: mantray's our stingrays 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 sea bat
Speaker 3: related incident, the character Nina starts getting into voodoo and
Speaker 3: then declares that she will marry any man who can
Speaker 3: kill the dreaded sea bat. Several men try and fail
Speaker 3: and then eventually a traveling preacher named Reverend Sims comes
Speaker 3: to town. This is Charles Bickford, and he somehow both
Speaker 3: converts Nina to Christianity. He leads her out of her
Speaker 3: pact with Voodoo and falls in love with her. And
Speaker 3: it's a tragic romance, I guess, or I don't know
Speaker 3: how tragic. I think they do end up happily together
Speaker 3: at the end. But there is a twist because it
Speaker 3: turns out Reverend Sims is actually an escaped convict pretending
Speaker 3: to be a minister. And then some of Nina's other
Speaker 3: jealous suitors try to capture him and turn him in
Speaker 3: for the bounty. But on the way there, they're like
Speaker 3: on a boat, and the boat gets attacked by the
Speaker 3: sea bat so they get sea batted, but Reverend Sims
Speaker 3: survives and he goes back to Nina and they I
Speaker 3: guess they live happily ever after. That's what I could
Speaker 3: piece together reading various nazis online from the American Film
Speaker 3: Institute Catalog's historical entry on the movie. I just wanted
Speaker 3: to read a couple of production notes because they factor
Speaker 3: into the Stingray or Manta Ray discussion quote. According to
Speaker 3: the Telegraph News. The movie, with its crew of sixty
Speaker 3: two personnel, was quote believed to be the largest motion
Speaker 3: picture expedition to leave Hollywood for another American country. The
Speaker 3: production required three pullmans and two baggage cars with two
Speaker 3: hundred tons of equipment, and an inventory of articles taken
Speaker 3: into Mexico under customs bond covered by more than one
Speaker 3: thousand pages and showed a total value of eighty thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: The article also claimed that the titular subject of the film,
Speaker 3: the Giant Stingray, was filmed for the first time in
Speaker 3: the sea bat.
Speaker 2: The giant stingray. Now, I'm not sure where that would
Speaker 2: be that there is a giant freshwater stingray, but I
Speaker 2: think this is a creature you find in touch tanks.
Speaker 2: This is not in captivity. I don't think this is
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: 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 comparable to the difference
Speaker 3: 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 2: And even then with the sting ray, I think there's
Speaker 2: depending on what type of stingray, you have different forms
Speaker 2: of feeding that are taking place.
Speaker 3: But yeah, essentially, many reviewers of Sea Bat also say
Speaker 3: not enough Sea Bat. Sea Bat 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
Speaker 3: ray but also like a 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: top topless women processing grain, and the climax has several
Speaker 3: characters forced to battle a giant manta ray that is
Speaker 3: said to be a threat to the local tuna fishermen.
Speaker 3: So once again you got a monster manter ray the monster.
Speaker 3: So I looked at this part where they're battling the ray,
Speaker 3: and it does look much more clearly like a ray. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: I think in this case that's because it is a
Speaker 3: real manta ray and the film's action climax is just
Speaker 3: an unsimulated harpooning of a real animal.
Speaker 2: Oh well, 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 2: Yeah, I don't think either of these are contenders for
Speaker 2: 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 animal,
Speaker 3: like its cousins, the predatory sharks. And yes, I did
Speaker 3: find evidence that this was just kind of common sailor's
Speaker 3: lore that rays would, you know, could be dangerous, could
Speaker 3: attack you, They might attack boats, they might attack divers.
Speaker 3: One article I came across that was recounting some of
Speaker 3: this folklore was from nineteen ten by the American biologist
Speaker 3: Theodore Gill. It's called the Story of the Devilfish. That
Speaker 3: name can be a little confusing because the term devilfish
Speaker 3: or devil ray is still used today to refer to
Speaker 3: a number of species within the genus Mobula, and that
Speaker 3: 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 mobular 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 geno more generally,
Speaker 3: so I know that's confusing. I think the lore Gil
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 basically 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 winglike
Speaker 3: 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. Indeed, that the devilfish may so attack
Speaker 3: a man is not only widely spread, but of an
Speaker 3: ancient origin. Such an idea, however, is contrary to our
Speaker 3: knowledge of the fish. Like several other of the gigantic selations,
Speaker 3: its diet is in almost inverse ratio to its size.
Speaker 3: So already in nineteen ten, Theodore Gill is not going
Speaker 3: for the lore that the rays fold down like a
Speaker 3: death blanket over the divers to cover them on the
Speaker 3: bottom and prepare them for death. But I did want
Speaker 3: to say I think he is sort of onto something
Speaker 3: when commenting about the idea of the diet being in
Speaker 3: almost inverse ratio to its size. This is not like
Speaker 3: a hard and fast rule. And there are very big
Speaker 3: active predators that prey on large animals, But many of
Speaker 3: the largest animals in the ocean, and the largest species
Speaker 3: within different marine lineages, are filter feeders, feeding entirely on
Speaker 3: tiny organisms and small bits of organic matter. And this
Speaker 3: is true, of course of the giant oceanic manterray. Now
Speaker 3: why would that be if you have a big filter
Speaker 3: feeding surface and basically like a big kind of bowl
Speaker 3: shaped mouth that functions like a sieve, and a big
Speaker 3: body that can store a lot of energy for time
Speaker 3: in between feeding booms. It can be an awesomely efficient
Speaker 3: way to live, and with a large body yourself, you
Speaker 3: don't need to worry a whole lot about predators. From
Speaker 3: what I've been reading, the only real predators of the
Speaker 3: giant oceanic manta rays are humans of course, and maybe
Speaker 3: some toothed whales like orcas, and I think sharks may
Speaker 3: sometimes bite them as well, but I understand sharks are
Speaker 3: not major predators for giant mantas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll come back to this, but basically that's the case,
Speaker 2: but with some variations depending on exactly where in the
Speaker 2: world you are, like the actually what the surrounding environment
Speaker 2: 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: biomass 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 biologically. You know, you think, well, it's good
Speaker 3: to be bigger if you're in a fight. I mean
Speaker 3: sometimes that's true, yes, but it's also just like you've
Speaker 3: got a big freezer. Basically you can store a lot
Speaker 3: of energy in that body.
Speaker 2: But of course a big part of this is in
Speaker 2: doing this as an organism, you become a specialist.
Speaker 3: Right. So if you're a giant mantray and you come
Speaker 3: across some divers in the water, I mean those divers
Speaker 3: might be delicious, full of nutrition, but you just there's
Speaker 3: nothing much you can do with them, Like, you don't
Speaker 3: even have the tools really to eat that diver if
Speaker 3: you wanted to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that ship sailed long ago. Well, one can only
Speaker 2: imagine that this is based on the fact that, of
Speaker 2: course they're big, and it's natural for a human being
Speaker 2: in the water outside of their element to be a
Speaker 2: little spooked by large fish. I mean that's common, you kunter,
Speaker 2: that's snorkeling. I feel, unless I know for certain what
Speaker 2: I'm looking at, I would be a little nervous around
Speaker 2: a large fish in the water. And then on top
Speaker 2: of that, we have this we've already talked about how
Speaker 2: there are observations of manta rays being curious concerning humans.
Speaker 2: Manta rays more than devil rays, I'm to understand, but
Speaker 2: that would of course add to it. If you're already
Speaker 2: a little nervous around a big animal and it is
Speaker 2: even halfway curious about you, that might also lead to
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah. And it's my understanding that as far as any
Speaker 2: kind of like recorded accounts of even minor injuries concerning
Speaker 2: manta rays and injuries to human beings, it's involved people
Speaker 2: getting too close to them, trying to ride them, and
Speaker 2: so forth, which you are not supposed to do.
Speaker 3: So despite their reputation as diabolical, but you know, vampire
Speaker 3: bats of the sea or as some kind of underwater
Speaker 3: death blanket. No giant mante rays or mante rays generally
Speaker 3: devil rays as well, are generally not to be thought
Speaker 3: of as a threat to humans, generally not very aggressive
Speaker 3: and not anything to be all that concerned about. But
Speaker 3: there is one other thing I came across in Gill's
Speaker 3: article that really does paint a kind of scary picture,
Speaker 3: not because of the ray doing anything threatening, but just
Speaker 3: because of the sonic atmosphere it creates. And this is
Speaker 3: Gil describing the experience of what it's like to be
Speaker 3: around one of these giant rays jumping out of the water,
Speaker 3: which they often do. So Gil writes, quote, it is
Speaker 3: the great leaps out of the water that are most striking,
Speaker 3: especially during the stillness of the night. Holder, on such
Speaker 3: an a case on the outer Florida reef, first encountered
Speaker 3: the fish, and then, quoting Holder, he says, quote, there
Speaker 3: came out of the darkness near at hand, a rushing,
Speaker 3: swishing noise, then a clap as of thunder, which seemed
Speaker 3: to go roaring and reverberating away over the reef like
Speaker 3: the discharge of a cannon. Not hard to imagine how
Speaker 3: that could engender a sense of fear about this animal.
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah. The authors of the Guide to Manta and
Speaker 2: Devil Rays of the world, Steven said. All they mentioned
Speaker 2: that if you're in the water when this happens, you
Speaker 2: definitely feel it. So yeah, manta's and devils devil rays
Speaker 2: all engage in leaping behavior like this, sometimes several meters
Speaker 2: out of the water, and it's unknown exactly why they
Speaker 2: do it, which I guess is similar to other fish
Speaker 2: which we've talked about on the show in the past.
Speaker 2: But the predominant theories involve either the dislodging of parasites,
Speaker 2: and as we'll discuss and I think the next episode
Speaker 2: we do on mantas, they geary a pretty large parasite load.
Speaker 2: The other possibility is communication. The authors note that this
Speaker 2: would mean there's much more to their social interaction than
Speaker 2: is often thought. But the basic hypothesis here is that
Speaker 2: these different mobilid species, especially the manta, they slap back
Speaker 2: down on the surface of the water, and in doing
Speaker 2: so they create a pressure wave this thunderclap that you
Speaker 2: reference that could then be detected by other rays of
Speaker 2: the same species miles away. Given that they're often observed
Speaker 2: leaping before feeding, they could be alerting other mantas to
Speaker 2: a feeding opportunity.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, Okay.
Speaker 2: And why would they do that, because that's a lie.
Speaker 2: Would you want to tell the other rays about all
Speaker 2: this great food you just found, Well, the authors point out,
Speaker 2: because food is plentiful, but the opportunity itself to feed
Speaker 2: is fleeting, subject to the tides and so forth. So
Speaker 2: the signal might be to bring in as many fellow
Speaker 2: rays as possible, to engage in group feeding strategies, which
Speaker 2: we'll get into in a bit here that also increase
Speaker 2: individual food. So you know, let's all do it while
Speaker 2: the getting's good. Let's all feed together and we'll all feast. Ah.
Speaker 3: Interesting, Okay.
Speaker 2: And then on top of that, some devil rays might
Speaker 2: engage in breaching as a fitness signal for mating. But
Speaker 2: again that's again that's a hypothesis based on just how
Speaker 2: it seems to time with other things that they're doing
Speaker 2: in the water. At any rate, as we giving back
Speaker 2: to human sentiments about manta rays and the idea that
Speaker 2: they're vampiric death blankets and so forth, Western sentiments seem
Speaker 2: to turn in a major way during the nineteen seventies
Speaker 2: despite the Jaws movies, with exposure to the reality that
Speaker 2: manta rays are anything but the devilfish of a sailor's legend.
Speaker 2: You know, they are the epitome of a gentle giant,
Speaker 2: indifferent or even curious considering humans in the water, and
Speaker 2: not aggressive at all. Again, I think the rare cases
Speaker 2: you'll find of people being injured at all by a
Speaker 2: manta are because they were intentionally trying to get way
Speaker 2: too close to them as the harvesting of their gills goes.
Speaker 2: Manta tourism has apparently been a major factor thus far
Speaker 2: in the fight against this practice. People around the world
Speaker 2: continue to spend a lot of money to observe manta
Speaker 2: rays in the wild. In that twenty eighteen Guide to
Speaker 2: the Man and Devil Rays of the World book, the
Speaker 2: authors share that at the time of its publication, the
Speaker 2: global estimate for direct revenue generated by manta tourism with
Speaker 2: something like seventy three million annually, with associated tourism revenue
Speaker 2: pushing that up to like one hundred and forty million annually.
Speaker 2: So all of that basically translates to the realization that
Speaker 2: if manta tourism is in the mix, a live manta
Speaker 2: ray is worth far more than a dead one, and
Speaker 2: so manti tourism, like a lot of marine tourism plays
Speaker 2: an important role in manta conservation. At the same time,
Speaker 2: of course, there's a careful balance there, right, because you
Speaker 2: want people to be excited about the mantas. You want
Speaker 2: people to come out and see the manta, spend money
Speaker 2: on the mantas and thus helping to protect them. But
Speaker 2: also you want to avoid detrimental side effects. You know
Speaker 2: that can occur in a number of forms. You don't
Speaker 2: want divers and snorkelers getting way too close to the animals.
Speaker 2: You also don't want unsustainable practices at resorts and on
Speaker 2: liver boards and so forth. You know, the ships are
Speaker 2: going to take divers and snorkelers out to see these creatures.
Speaker 2: You know, you have to walk that line, and I
Speaker 2: think in my understanding is that everyone involved continues to
Speaker 2: figure out exactly where that line falls. So at this point,
Speaker 2: I thought we'd run through some basics about manta rays
Speaker 2: and some associated devil rays to finish out this episode.
Speaker 2: So mantis and devil rays belong to a group collectively
Speaker 2: known as the Mobulids of the family mobili day zooming
Speaker 2: out there rays of the order milio Batiforms, which contains
Speaker 2: twelve families, three hundred and seventy species of rays, including
Speaker 2: sting rays of various species. Moboloids are most closely related
Speaker 2: to eagle rays and clown nose rays of this order,
Speaker 2: which are bottom feeders. They sift for mollusks and crustaceans
Speaker 2: on the seabed. Moboloids, however, have adapted to pelagic filter
Speaker 2: feeding in the open water, similar to the evolutionary path
Speaker 2: we see with like baleen whales and whale sharks, you know,
Speaker 2: as we've been discussing, like specialize in feeding on all
Speaker 2: the little things in the water. Eat the cloud if
Speaker 2: you will, Yes, So they use their mouths and modified
Speaker 2: gill plates in their filter feeding. The devil ray that
Speaker 2: we've been discussing, these are much smaller. There are a
Speaker 2: few different varieties, with the largest I believe being the
Speaker 2: Chilean devil ray or sickle fin devil ray. It has
Speaker 2: a maximum disc width of eleven point two feet or
Speaker 2: three hundred and forty centimeters, and it can weigh up
Speaker 2: to eight hundred and eighty two or four hundred kilograms.
Speaker 2: The spinetail devil ray is also rather big. I mention
Speaker 2: it because its scientific name is mobula mobular, which is
Speaker 2: always fun. And again the reef manta ray Mobula alfredi,
Speaker 2: which sounds delicious but it's not on the menu, comes
Speaker 2: in at a maximum disc width of fifteen feet or
Speaker 2: four hundred and fifty centimeters and a weight of fifteen
Speaker 2: hundred pounds or seven hundred kilograms. But then again, the
Speaker 2: oceanic manta is the biggest. That's Mobula birostras, and it
Speaker 2: can reach a disc width of twenty three feet or
Speaker 2: seven hundred centimeters and a weight of up to forty
Speaker 2: four hundred pounds or two thousand kilograms. They are the
Speaker 2: largest of all rays, and actually, i'm to understand, the
Speaker 2: fifth largest fish. Period. There's also some argument to be
Speaker 2: made for a possible third species of extent manta, a
Speaker 2: Caribbean manta, closely related to the oceanic manta, only smaller now.
Speaker 2: In addition to those gill plates, the other defining characteristics
Speaker 2: of the mamboloids are their devil horns. That certainly seems
Speaker 2: to lend to this idea that there's some sort of evil,
Speaker 2: vampiric creature there. They're like bats, and then they have
Speaker 2: devil horns. These are not horns, of course, These are
Speaker 2: modified cephalic fins, So the rays use these special fins
Speaker 2: to funnel plankton into their mouths during feeding. So the
Speaker 2: gill plates that we were describing, these are supported by
Speaker 2: five pairs of gill arches. You can see these when
Speaker 2: you see some like wide mouth photographs of these various organisms,
Speaker 2: and each species both slightly different gill plate structures to
Speaker 2: capture particular target prey. We were talking about the ratio
Speaker 2: between the size of the organism and the size of
Speaker 2: the prey. Manta rays, the biggest, have gill plates evolved
Speaker 2: to capture much smaller plectonic prey compared to various devil
Speaker 2: ray species for example, they're going after the real small
Speaker 2: stuff they're feeding. Is really interesting though, on top of this,
Speaker 2: because their bodies are you know, think of them as
Speaker 2: being largely flat, you know, they're kind of flattened out,
Speaker 2: But as Stevens and co authors point out, during feeding quote,
Speaker 2: their once flattened body and mouth becomes a giant black
Speaker 2: hole with the pectoral fins serving as wings that power
Speaker 2: the ray through the water, and then the gill plates
Speaker 2: do the rest. So yeah, they expand out. They become
Speaker 2: this like giant gaping maw to just consume all the
Speaker 2: plankton they can get, and so that's the basic strategy.
Speaker 2: Open your mouth really wide, use your cephalic fins to
Speaker 2: help guide the food into the mouth, and then you know,
Speaker 2: go in a straight line, just go straight through the food.
Speaker 2: You know, eat the cloud. But that's just one of
Speaker 2: eight and possibly nine different observed feeding strategies that you
Speaker 2: see in rays, with only half of those being used
Speaker 2: at least observed in devil rays. So I'm going to
Speaker 2: roll through these because they're they're pretty interesting. Some some
Speaker 2: are only slight variations based on the other ones. But
Speaker 2: so first of all, you have straight feeding. So this
Speaker 2: is usually horizontal, but sometimes it's vertical and the distance
Speaker 2: depends on prey frequency. So you have a cloud of plankton,
Speaker 2: a big school of plankedin or something. Well, you just
Speaker 2: move straight through it, eat it, eat it up, swallow
Speaker 2: it up, and then you do a one hundred and
Speaker 2: eighty degree turn at the end and repeat as needed.
Speaker 2: Number two this is manta's only apparently, and it's surface feeding.
Speaker 2: So this is basically straight feeding, except right at the
Speaker 2: surface of the water. All right, All right, now it
Speaker 2: starts getting interesting. Chain feeding. So up to several dozen
Speaker 2: 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 2: I think that that might be what's happening. And also
Speaker 2: we just have to remember we're dealing with an abundance
Speaker 2: of food here and this ties in. This is exactly
Speaker 2: and this is an example of the social feeding technique
Speaker 2: group feed technique that they might hypothetically be calling other
Speaker 2: mantas to engage in. Okay of next piggyback feeding. So
Speaker 2: this is manta's only and it's actually only been observed
Speaker 2: in reef mantas. So you'll have a smaller manta, usually
Speaker 2: a male, and it finds a larger usually female, matches
Speaker 2: her pace, and it's like stacked on top of her
Speaker 2: and feeds as she's feeding in a straight line. And
Speaker 2: sometimes you'll get additional mantas stacked on top of that
Speaker 2: until the bottom most manta swims off and displaces the
Speaker 2: whole stack. All right, Here's where it gets a little fancy.
Speaker 2: Summer salt feeding. So this is where they're going in
Speaker 2: a straight line, and then they'll do a three hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty degree loop in the water while feeding, usually
Speaker 2: just one or two loops out of straight feeding, but
Speaker 2: they might do several dozen continuous summer salts, depending I
Speaker 2: guess on how it's going for them and with the plankton.
Speaker 2: This next one, though, this is where it gets. This
Speaker 2: one gets crazy cyclone feeding. What Yeah, so this is
Speaker 2: a parent reef mantas only at least as far as
Speaker 2: observations go. And it begins as just a line of
Speaker 2: chain feeding straight feeders. But then you know, something, something changes.
Speaker 2: You know, maybe it's in just the how much planked
Speaker 2: in their encountering. But the chain loops back on itself
Speaker 2: to form a circle, and now we have a circle
Speaker 2: of mantas feeding. And then more mantas begin to form
Speaker 2: to join in and become part of the formation, and
Speaker 2: so we end up with a counterclockwise cyclone that might
Speaker 2: ultimately entail one hundred and fifty individuals and it might
Speaker 2: even last up to an hour.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And again the idea here seems to be that these
Speaker 2: these group feeding scenarios when they're they're able to pull
Speaker 2: them together like it actually results in a bounty for
Speaker 2: everyone involved. On top of this, we have sideways feeding.
Speaker 2: This is maybe not that fancy, it's just the manta
Speaker 2: ray doing you know, chain feeding or straight feeding. But
Speaker 2: on their side. Then we have bottom feeding, which I
Speaker 2: guess you can think of as a return to form
Speaker 2: feeding along the bottom like some of the other rays
Speaker 2: that they're more distantly related to. And then a ninth
Speaker 2: possible feeding technique that the authors here observe in devil
Speaker 2: rays is what they call lunge feeding, and that's rapid
Speaker 2: feeding acceleration into dense schools of prey. Again, this would
Speaker 2: I think only be devil rays, which are going to
Speaker 2: be the smaller of the species involved here. So mangoloods
Speaker 2: first pop up in the fossil records some twenty eight
Speaker 2: million years ago during the Middle Oligocene epoch, so according
Speaker 2: to Stevens at All, they're among the most recently evolved
Speaker 2: of the elasmo Bronx. This includes all sharks and battomorphs,
Speaker 2: so you know sharks, rays, and so forth, the various
Speaker 2: cartilage fish swimmers of the oceans. They've evolved to of
Speaker 2: course become exceptional open water swimmers with sufficient speed bursts
Speaker 2: up to a belief twenty miles per hour or thirty
Speaker 2: three kilometers per hour. And this was interesting, And I
Speaker 2: have trouble exactly understanding this how this works, but I
Speaker 2: totally believe it. They say that they're flattened shapes apparently
Speaker 2: make it more difficult for predators to bite onto them,
Speaker 2: 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 that,
Speaker 3: you're maybe able to keep your most vital parts kind
Speaker 3: of central, so if something does bite you, it gets
Speaker 3: a less vital part of you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like maybe you're more it's more possible that you
Speaker 2: get a bite of a fin or wing, if you will. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is something they get get into in the book.
Speaker 2: They do rapidly heal from serious injuries. The book displays
Speaker 2: a few different rather dramatic examples via photograph of rays
Speaker 2: with clear bites taken out of their fins, out of
Speaker 2: their wings, and then a subsequent photo showing how those
Speaker 2: like massive bites have mostly but you know, imperfectly healed
Speaker 2: at a later observation date. And I mentioned this already,
Speaker 2: but predation rates also seem to depend on particular communities
Speaker 2: and environments. So, for example, the authors of this book
Speaker 2: point out that mantis and Mozambique display far more evidence
Speaker 2: of shark attacks compared to those in the Maldives, where
Speaker 2: less than fifteen percent of mantis 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 mants
Speaker 3: had been bitten by sharks but had survived the encounter
Speaker 3: because they grew up and the wounds healed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the healing of those wounds also involves some
Speaker 2: of the cleaning fish, which we'll get back to in
Speaker 2: the next episode we do on mantas. All right, well,
Speaker 2: we're going to go and close this episode of stuff
Speaker 2: to blow your mind, but we're going to be back.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's going to be the this week.
Speaker 2: I think that's going to be next week based on
Speaker 2: the way the schedule's coming together. But we'll be back
Speaker 2: with at least one more episode on the manta Ray.
Speaker 2: If not a couple, we'll just see how it comes together.
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