two decades ago we knew almost nothing
about the world’s largest ray one of the
biggest fish in our ocean less than ten
years ago the conservation status of
this animal was still listed as data
deficient highlighting the fact that we
didn’t know very much about its ecology
or population trends in the wild five
years ago we still thought there was a
single species of Manta roaming the
world’s oceans people often refer to me
as a obsessive specie ologist
most people call me a conservation
biologist which is true and now an
emerging Explorer I don’t know I’m
actually just a girl that likes fish I
grew up inspired by great explorers as
probably many of you did and you know
the likes of Jacques Cousteau and Sylvia
Earle eminent Hyo Wilson and these
people really inspired me and and I
admired their dedication and their
passion but most of all I also
appreciated that each one of them seemed
to share a similar philosophy they
seemed to understand that it would take
careful long-term investigation to
unravel ecological mysteries and they
chose to take us along for that journey
I was in love with the ocean before I’d
even been underneath the ocean I was
begging my parents let me learn how to
dive I got certified on my 12th birthday
I went to marine biology camps every
single summer of my youth I was I was
that kid and in graduate school finally
a marine biologist in my own right I was
just desperate to immerse myself in
biological problem solving I too like
Jane Goodall wanted to just get out
there do stuff learn about a specific
species but I I needed to travel I
needed to find my inspiration figure out
what it is that I was meant to do and I
was drawn to Africa that’s where I still
live and there I was inspired I was
inspired at a workshop for the IUCN I
was asked to come and help with
conservation assessments for their red
list and I was asked to help evaluate
the the status of the giant manta ray
and it became very clear to us that week
that we know nothing about this animal
or we didn’t at the time and it was not
a real shocker that by the end of the
week we had to list this
as data deficient because we were unable
to assess its conservation status you
know it’s awful feeling but the wheels
had started to turn in my mind I’ve been
in love with mantas probably since a
very first moment I saw one underwater
and if you haven’t seen one get out
there and do it
these are awesome animals it’s about the
coolest you know experience that you can
have underwater with a fish they are
intelligent and curious that the largest
brain of any fish these are animals that
behave like mammals even though they’re
fish they don’t swim away from you they
swim towards you they love to play there
in curious they engage you underwater
but for the first time I was seeing them
not as an animal that I love to dive
with not as an animal that I just like
to take photographs of but as an animal
that had been overlooked that needed
scientific attention my attention and as
happenstance would have it I had been
doing exploratory diving off the very
remote and undeveloped coastline of
Mozambique and wow what an awesome time
of my life you know
diving places that maybe no one had ever
drove before camping along uninhabited
beaches I would recommend it it’s a
great experience but as a biologist what
really moved me what jumped out at me
was just the number of megafauna off
this coastline the abundance and
diversity of megafires like the
Galapagos of the Indian Ocean and you
know every day on the way to our dives
we were tripping over whale sharks and
there was huge pods of dolphins and
whales and you know other threatened
marine life marine turtles and mantas
important distinction lots of them so
this was my opportunity this is my
opportunity to give back do something an
animal that had not been really worked
on before probably for lack of
opportunity and a paucity of data that
was hampering its conservation status
listing and so this was how I was going
to contribute this is how I was going to
give back and so I began the very slow
road of trying to develop a research
program out in the middle of nowhere on
these animals and it was rough going at
first it was logistically what a
nightmare and it was expensive and messy
often times I had to actually cash in my
life savings as a young student to just
fund a
let’s study when my university in
Australia found this idea a little out
there and the fact was though is that I
was learning things and I was inspired
by that we were learning amazing things
things that weren’t in any of the
current literature on these animals so
obviously we were doing something right
and I wanted to keep going what seemed
like an near impossible goal for a 23
year old American girl out in the middle
of nowhere in Africa by herself slowly
started to become something that could
be possible and people rallied behind my
efforts there it was so fantastic and in
those early years I had to remember that
I needed to pace myself that it had
taken some of my greatest heroes a
lifetime to tease out you know this
ecological information on the animals
they were working on and if I was going
to go down that same road I would have
to expect that was going to take me a
long time too so like any good plan I
needed a strategy and I thought back to
the conservation assessment of this
animals data deficient what was it
missing biological information life
history parameters abundance estimates
population trends so that should be easy
right but I took each challenge as a
separate issue and and I devised a way
of how to attack it my first issue was
just how do we study these animals in
the wild people had already identified
that manta rays have individual spot
patterning on them that’s individual to
different animals you know like a
fingerprint and what I wanted to know is
could I take this individual patterning
and use it as a mark a permanent mark
and study these animals non-intrusive ly
through photography carefully just
making observations of individuals over
time and learning more about them and
then obviously collectively about
populations that we were interested in
and the answer to every single one of
those questions is a resounding yes
we can I’ve now spent thousands of dives
under water carefully investigating
these animals learning more about them
we’ve learned about their natural
behaviors they’re really secretive
behaviors like reproductive ecology
we’ve learned about their movements and
their migrations through this
methodology we were able to estimate for
the very first time the abundance I had
a monitored site something has never
been attempted before we learned about
their natural pressures from predation
they’re not so natural
from us I completed the first ph.d
program first deep PhD project on manta
rays demonstrating that these animals
can and must continue to be studied in
the wild I’m happy to say that there are
many many PhD studies underway now for
manta rays and in the middle of all of
this we described a new species of manta
it’s not my intention it just kind of
popped up and it popped up early in my
studies and the reason for it is because
no one had really spent time in the wild
with these animals before natural
observation just wasn’t there and it’s
and it’s not because they don’t look
different because they do and they not
just look different they behave
different they lead different lives to a
large extent they live in different
places so that wasn’t the issue I at
that time you know my work had had gone
international and I was doing work
across the globe and it was hard to
ignore the the growing global trends
Manta populations that were once stable
were now in decline there’s rises and a
new fishery for these animals where
people would directly hunt mantas to
extract their gill rakers to use in
bogus Chinese medicinal tonic and even
though this was really disturbing we
were starting to say we’re gonna fight
back we’re gonna use all the information
that we’ve been ascertaining over the
last decade to be able to fight this be
able to work on conservation and we did
we used all the information that we had
to to fight that data deficient red list
assessment and year after year we kept
reevaluating them until finally in 2011
they were declared a threatened species
worldwide as vulnerable to extinction
and my research program changed
overnight I abandoned you know worked on
just pure ecology and then I put all my
focus into conservation we started
integrating technology into our research
program so that we could better
understand how to manage these these
animals and the populations in different
areas of the world deploying tags with
advanced satellite technology we were
able to track these animals where they
went learn more about their migrations
learn more about their habits and this
technology improved in
people for us we were able to understand
for the first time that these animals
travel long distances in short periods
of time use vast horizontal planes in
the ocean travel into the high seas
unprotected areas and unbelievably are
using really deep parts of our oceans
the bath people ajik parts of our oceans
over 4,500 feet from the surface what
they’re doing down there
I don’t know so the people that say that
there’s nothing left to discover that
that everything’s been done are you guys
out of your mind
you know ordinary people are discovering
extraordinary things every day just pick
up a National Geographic magazine right
and you know for us we had totally
underestimated this animal myself
included and now that we had
underestimated them and we were learning
more about them we needed to act we
needed to do something so with my
Ecuadorian team we put together a
proposal to list these animals on the
convention for migratory species Act it
was a bold move and we weren’t sure if
it was going to work but because we had
started collecting all of this
information on these animals the
proposal was full of good science and
unbelievably in 2011 mantarays became
the very first ray species in history to
be listed on this act what about this
unsustainable international fishing
trade I was telling you about well that
same Ecuadorian team and I put together
a proposal not a year later to try and
list these species actually both species
of mantas on site YZ sides– is an
intergovernmental treaty that aims to
try and make sure that that
international trade doesn’t negatively
influence our wild flora and fauna and
my team in Mozambique took our 10 year
data sets and put together a publication
to demonstrate that there have been an
88% decline in our population in the
South of Mozambique over the last ten
years in response to apparently a very
small artisanal fisheries air and if
that wasn’t evidence enough of why we
needed to protect them we also
demonstrated through our reproductive
ecology worked at these are some of the
most
serve ative animals especially in the
shark and Ray group that there that
there are manta rays have very small
litter sizes they only have one baby
every two to three years or so on
average to give it to you in other terms
most shark and Ray species will have
more offspring in a single litter than
manta rays will have over the entire
course of their lifetime so we started
to use these this different information
and probably one of the most passionate
appeals that I’ve ever seen to
government to try and get these animals
listed on CDs and in Bangkok this year
in March we were successful in getting
them awarded appendix to listing it was
just awesome I was really moved by
international collaboration researchers
coming together for this common cause I
was really moved by the fact that the
public was behind us and I wanted to
harness that passion and that support
from the public so I had this idea to
create the first automated global online
database for manta rays it’s called
manta matcher it’s not a manta ray
dating site what it’s supposed to do is
it’s supposed to promote the ordinary
people to pick up a camera and
contribute to a global scientific
initiative and it helps researchers use
their data and helps them share their
data with other researchers because
international collaboration is just so
important and the result is quite
literally one of the best examples that
I’ve currently seen on a
multidisciplinary approach to solving a
wildlife conservation issue through you
know shared collaborative research and
also public support that’s what we need
to be striving towards I think two
decades ago we knew almost nothing about
the world’s largest Ray what we have
found out has shocked us as broken
natural records has inspired us to
evolve new ways to how to protect them
you know it’s amazing what we can
achieve it’s a real testament it speaks
to the heart of exploration and what we
as humans can do if we set our mind to
it
obsessive specie ologist
maybe but I think the problems of the
oceans are going to be solved one
species
at a time region by region saving one
critical habitat after the next that’s
what I believe and I know that a lot of
things need to change how we as humans
view the ocean how we use this resource
our impacts on it but I I truly feel
that we have to inspire exploration and
we have to allow people to be creative
we have to encourage people to dare to
make a difference to use each one of our
individual talents and we all have so
many to try and solve these problems
I’ve taken on the challenge of trying to
save some of the oceans largest fish and
I’m trying to create a manta army to
help me do so but I think if we’re going
to change the future of our oceans and
change the future of our planet we need
to encourage these people to dare to
make a difference we need more explorers
we need more ambassadors we need more
people to to dream big and I’m so proud
to be a part of a organization now that
is helping to to push that philosophy
and who really believes in exploration
so thank you very much and I look
forward to talking with each and every
one of you hopefully over the course of
this week
Oh
about the world’s largest ray one of the
biggest fish in our ocean less than ten
years ago the conservation status of
this animal was still listed as data
deficient highlighting the fact that we
didn’t know very much about its ecology
or population trends in the wild five
years ago we still thought there was a
single species of Manta roaming the
world’s oceans people often refer to me
as a obsessive specie ologist
most people call me a conservation
biologist which is true and now an
emerging Explorer I don’t know I’m
actually just a girl that likes fish I
grew up inspired by great explorers as
probably many of you did and you know
the likes of Jacques Cousteau and Sylvia
Earle eminent Hyo Wilson and these
people really inspired me and and I
admired their dedication and their
passion but most of all I also
appreciated that each one of them seemed
to share a similar philosophy they
seemed to understand that it would take
careful long-term investigation to
unravel ecological mysteries and they
chose to take us along for that journey
I was in love with the ocean before I’d
even been underneath the ocean I was
begging my parents let me learn how to
dive I got certified on my 12th birthday
I went to marine biology camps every
single summer of my youth I was I was
that kid and in graduate school finally
a marine biologist in my own right I was
just desperate to immerse myself in
biological problem solving I too like
Jane Goodall wanted to just get out
there do stuff learn about a specific
species but I I needed to travel I
needed to find my inspiration figure out
what it is that I was meant to do and I
was drawn to Africa that’s where I still
live and there I was inspired I was
inspired at a workshop for the IUCN I
was asked to come and help with
conservation assessments for their red
list and I was asked to help evaluate
the the status of the giant manta ray
and it became very clear to us that week
that we know nothing about this animal
or we didn’t at the time and it was not
a real shocker that by the end of the
week we had to list this
as data deficient because we were unable
to assess its conservation status you
know it’s awful feeling but the wheels
had started to turn in my mind I’ve been
in love with mantas probably since a
very first moment I saw one underwater
and if you haven’t seen one get out
there and do it
these are awesome animals it’s about the
coolest you know experience that you can
have underwater with a fish they are
intelligent and curious that the largest
brain of any fish these are animals that
behave like mammals even though they’re
fish they don’t swim away from you they
swim towards you they love to play there
in curious they engage you underwater
but for the first time I was seeing them
not as an animal that I love to dive
with not as an animal that I just like
to take photographs of but as an animal
that had been overlooked that needed
scientific attention my attention and as
happenstance would have it I had been
doing exploratory diving off the very
remote and undeveloped coastline of
Mozambique and wow what an awesome time
of my life you know
diving places that maybe no one had ever
drove before camping along uninhabited
beaches I would recommend it it’s a
great experience but as a biologist what
really moved me what jumped out at me
was just the number of megafauna off
this coastline the abundance and
diversity of megafires like the
Galapagos of the Indian Ocean and you
know every day on the way to our dives
we were tripping over whale sharks and
there was huge pods of dolphins and
whales and you know other threatened
marine life marine turtles and mantas
important distinction lots of them so
this was my opportunity this is my
opportunity to give back do something an
animal that had not been really worked
on before probably for lack of
opportunity and a paucity of data that
was hampering its conservation status
listing and so this was how I was going
to contribute this is how I was going to
give back and so I began the very slow
road of trying to develop a research
program out in the middle of nowhere on
these animals and it was rough going at
first it was logistically what a
nightmare and it was expensive and messy
often times I had to actually cash in my
life savings as a young student to just
fund a
let’s study when my university in
Australia found this idea a little out
there and the fact was though is that I
was learning things and I was inspired
by that we were learning amazing things
things that weren’t in any of the
current literature on these animals so
obviously we were doing something right
and I wanted to keep going what seemed
like an near impossible goal for a 23
year old American girl out in the middle
of nowhere in Africa by herself slowly
started to become something that could
be possible and people rallied behind my
efforts there it was so fantastic and in
those early years I had to remember that
I needed to pace myself that it had
taken some of my greatest heroes a
lifetime to tease out you know this
ecological information on the animals
they were working on and if I was going
to go down that same road I would have
to expect that was going to take me a
long time too so like any good plan I
needed a strategy and I thought back to
the conservation assessment of this
animals data deficient what was it
missing biological information life
history parameters abundance estimates
population trends so that should be easy
right but I took each challenge as a
separate issue and and I devised a way
of how to attack it my first issue was
just how do we study these animals in
the wild people had already identified
that manta rays have individual spot
patterning on them that’s individual to
different animals you know like a
fingerprint and what I wanted to know is
could I take this individual patterning
and use it as a mark a permanent mark
and study these animals non-intrusive ly
through photography carefully just
making observations of individuals over
time and learning more about them and
then obviously collectively about
populations that we were interested in
and the answer to every single one of
those questions is a resounding yes
we can I’ve now spent thousands of dives
under water carefully investigating
these animals learning more about them
we’ve learned about their natural
behaviors they’re really secretive
behaviors like reproductive ecology
we’ve learned about their movements and
their migrations through this
methodology we were able to estimate for
the very first time the abundance I had
a monitored site something has never
been attempted before we learned about
their natural pressures from predation
they’re not so natural
from us I completed the first ph.d
program first deep PhD project on manta
rays demonstrating that these animals
can and must continue to be studied in
the wild I’m happy to say that there are
many many PhD studies underway now for
manta rays and in the middle of all of
this we described a new species of manta
it’s not my intention it just kind of
popped up and it popped up early in my
studies and the reason for it is because
no one had really spent time in the wild
with these animals before natural
observation just wasn’t there and it’s
and it’s not because they don’t look
different because they do and they not
just look different they behave
different they lead different lives to a
large extent they live in different
places so that wasn’t the issue I at
that time you know my work had had gone
international and I was doing work
across the globe and it was hard to
ignore the the growing global trends
Manta populations that were once stable
were now in decline there’s rises and a
new fishery for these animals where
people would directly hunt mantas to
extract their gill rakers to use in
bogus Chinese medicinal tonic and even
though this was really disturbing we
were starting to say we’re gonna fight
back we’re gonna use all the information
that we’ve been ascertaining over the
last decade to be able to fight this be
able to work on conservation and we did
we used all the information that we had
to to fight that data deficient red list
assessment and year after year we kept
reevaluating them until finally in 2011
they were declared a threatened species
worldwide as vulnerable to extinction
and my research program changed
overnight I abandoned you know worked on
just pure ecology and then I put all my
focus into conservation we started
integrating technology into our research
program so that we could better
understand how to manage these these
animals and the populations in different
areas of the world deploying tags with
advanced satellite technology we were
able to track these animals where they
went learn more about their migrations
learn more about their habits and this
technology improved in
people for us we were able to understand
for the first time that these animals
travel long distances in short periods
of time use vast horizontal planes in
the ocean travel into the high seas
unprotected areas and unbelievably are
using really deep parts of our oceans
the bath people ajik parts of our oceans
over 4,500 feet from the surface what
they’re doing down there
I don’t know so the people that say that
there’s nothing left to discover that
that everything’s been done are you guys
out of your mind
you know ordinary people are discovering
extraordinary things every day just pick
up a National Geographic magazine right
and you know for us we had totally
underestimated this animal myself
included and now that we had
underestimated them and we were learning
more about them we needed to act we
needed to do something so with my
Ecuadorian team we put together a
proposal to list these animals on the
convention for migratory species Act it
was a bold move and we weren’t sure if
it was going to work but because we had
started collecting all of this
information on these animals the
proposal was full of good science and
unbelievably in 2011 mantarays became
the very first ray species in history to
be listed on this act what about this
unsustainable international fishing
trade I was telling you about well that
same Ecuadorian team and I put together
a proposal not a year later to try and
list these species actually both species
of mantas on site YZ sides– is an
intergovernmental treaty that aims to
try and make sure that that
international trade doesn’t negatively
influence our wild flora and fauna and
my team in Mozambique took our 10 year
data sets and put together a publication
to demonstrate that there have been an
88% decline in our population in the
South of Mozambique over the last ten
years in response to apparently a very
small artisanal fisheries air and if
that wasn’t evidence enough of why we
needed to protect them we also
demonstrated through our reproductive
ecology worked at these are some of the
most
serve ative animals especially in the
shark and Ray group that there that
there are manta rays have very small
litter sizes they only have one baby
every two to three years or so on
average to give it to you in other terms
most shark and Ray species will have
more offspring in a single litter than
manta rays will have over the entire
course of their lifetime so we started
to use these this different information
and probably one of the most passionate
appeals that I’ve ever seen to
government to try and get these animals
listed on CDs and in Bangkok this year
in March we were successful in getting
them awarded appendix to listing it was
just awesome I was really moved by
international collaboration researchers
coming together for this common cause I
was really moved by the fact that the
public was behind us and I wanted to
harness that passion and that support
from the public so I had this idea to
create the first automated global online
database for manta rays it’s called
manta matcher it’s not a manta ray
dating site what it’s supposed to do is
it’s supposed to promote the ordinary
people to pick up a camera and
contribute to a global scientific
initiative and it helps researchers use
their data and helps them share their
data with other researchers because
international collaboration is just so
important and the result is quite
literally one of the best examples that
I’ve currently seen on a
multidisciplinary approach to solving a
wildlife conservation issue through you
know shared collaborative research and
also public support that’s what we need
to be striving towards I think two
decades ago we knew almost nothing about
the world’s largest Ray what we have
found out has shocked us as broken
natural records has inspired us to
evolve new ways to how to protect them
you know it’s amazing what we can
achieve it’s a real testament it speaks
to the heart of exploration and what we
as humans can do if we set our mind to
it
obsessive specie ologist
maybe but I think the problems of the
oceans are going to be solved one
species
at a time region by region saving one
critical habitat after the next that’s
what I believe and I know that a lot of
things need to change how we as humans
view the ocean how we use this resource
our impacts on it but I I truly feel
that we have to inspire exploration and
we have to allow people to be creative
we have to encourage people to dare to
make a difference to use each one of our
individual talents and we all have so
many to try and solve these problems
I’ve taken on the challenge of trying to
save some of the oceans largest fish and
I’m trying to create a manta army to
help me do so but I think if we’re going
to change the future of our oceans and
change the future of our planet we need
to encourage these people to dare to
make a difference we need more explorers
we need more ambassadors we need more
people to to dream big and I’m so proud
to be a part of a organization now that
is helping to to push that philosophy
and who really believes in exploration
so thank you very much and I look
forward to talking with each and every
one of you hopefully over the course of
this week
Oh
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