The Story of the Manta and Mobula

Picture this. You're swimming in the Ocean and suddenly you see a very large shadow below you. At another glance you notice that the shadow is roughly 25 feet long and has a body shaped not like a shark but a ray. This is not your typical stingray though. This is a manta ray, one of the most gentle creatures in the sea. Weighing up to 5,000lbs, this creature has never harmed a single human being. Despite being a ray, this ray has no stinging tail or barb. This ray can live for 20 years, but like sharks and other rays, this ray matures later in life. Manta rays can only give birth to up to 16 pups in the course of their entire lives, which means there are not too many of them on the planet. Female manta rays will give birth to just one pup at a time. The pups weigh roughly 25lbs and tends to stay in very shallow waters. This creature, so gentle and majestic, is in need of our help...



Now picture this. You're on a boat when suddenly a small ray launches into the air. You sit and wonder if you really just saw a ray leap out of the water. Then it leaps out of the water once more and does a flip! You watch in amazement as the creature continues to seemingly perform tricks while jumping out of the water. This ray, the Mobula, is the smallest member of the Manta Ray family. Unlike manta rays that grow to massive sizes, the mobula gets a wingspan of roughly 2 feet. This little ray was once common in the Sea of Corte, but much like their larger cousins... These animals need our help...

Both manta and mobula rays are quickly vanishing from the world's Oceans. More and more people are fishing for these animals and killing them for various reasons. The most prominent of these reasons is to harvest the animal's gill rakers. Just 2lbs of gill rakers from a manta ray sells for $500 U.S. in China. The purpose for the harvest is to reduce toxin levels in human blood.which can lower body temperature and improve circulation. Much like the benefits of eating shark fin soup, there is no scientific proof that consuming manta ray gill rakers has any benefits to human health. The rest of the ray is either tossed or cut up and used to make fake scallops, leather boots and wallets, and fake shark cartilage. Economically there is virtually no value to any part of the ray except the gill rakers.

Little is known about the populations of these incredible animals. As a result, there are very few rules and regulations are currently in place to protect them. Currently, the Manta Ray is listed as Vulnerable to extinction on the IUCN's Red List while the Mobula Ray is listed as Data Deficient. These animals need our help and as the demand for gill rakers continues to increase, their populations are sure to decrease. With no scientific backing to the claim of health benefits, there is really no reason to be killing these animals other than pure greed.