IMAGE: PADI/JAY CLUE
Save the Maldives’ manta rays
ON A PRIVATE ISLAND IN THE SOUTHERN MALDIVES, GUESTS HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO BECOME CONSERVATION SPECIALISTS, LEARNING ABOUT MANTA RAYS FROM MARINE BIOLOGIST MIRIAM STAIGER WORDS: JESSICA VINCENT
For Miriam Staiger, one of the 10 full-time marine biologists based at Six Senses Laamu, working in ocean conservation wasn’t always part of the plan. Growing up miles away from the sea, in the Black Forest in southwest Germany, Miriam’s love of the underwater world — and more specifically, manta rays — flourished later in life, on a diving trip in Mozambique. “I was hooked the moment I saw my first
manta in Africa,” says Miriam. “They’re the most beautiful animals in the ocean, but they’re also very mysterious. Straight after that trip, I quit my plans to become a teacher and started my journey in marine conservation.” I meet Miriam at Six Senses Laamu, a private
island resort in the remote Laamu Atoll in southern Maldives, where I’ve come to get PADI-certified as a Maldivian Manta Ray Conservation Specialist. The speciality dive course teaches recreational divers how to photo ID manta rays, which are on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. “The Maldives has the largest recorded
reef manta ray population in the world,” says Miriam. “But they’re often caught as bycatch or on purpose for their gill plates, which are increasingly being used in Asian medicine.
Photo IDing individual mantas is a noninvasive way of monitoring the population.” It’s a relatively easy place to study them,
too. Hithadhoo Corner sits nearby Six Senses’ sweeping private beach, a 98-ft-deep channel reef — or ‘cleaning station’, as marine biologists call it — where mantas and other megafauna like sharks and turtles come to be cleansed of parasites by shoals of resident bluestreak cleaner wrasse. I’m being pushed and pulled like paper
caught in the wind, the pressure building in my ears as we drop to 20 metres. In the distance, just above the murky reef, I spot the faint outline of a large grey fin — it’s a blacktip reefshark searching for food. Then suddenly, I spot her. A reef manta ray is swimming towards me. She doesn’t seem real at first, flapping silently through the darkness like a diamond- shaped bird. But as she gets closer, I see the white flecks on her midnight-blue wings and an enormous gaping mouth. She gets closer, just a few metres from me
now, pirouetting through the current as if it weren’t there. She’s almost three metres wide and likely weighs over a tonne, but she has the elegance of a ballet dancer, moving in one smooth, fluid motion, as if she were water
IN NUMBERS 5,383
The number of reef manta rays recorded in the
Maldives from 2003 to 2022 — the largest recorded
manta ray population in the world.
523
The number of reef manta rays injured from fishing lines and boat strikes between 2003 and 2022.
38 The age of Husky, the Maldives’ oldest manta ray. 247
The largest group of reef manta rays seen in the Maldives.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER – LUXURY COLLECTION 51
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