How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 095: Manta ray Migration Patterns and Their Implications For Management in Indonesia
Manta Rays are the subject of this week's Research Thursday. I discuss a paper that wanted to figure out where Manta Rays go when they are not in 3 different protected areas. The authors used citizen science (Manta Matcher) to identify individuals and track their migration within the area.
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Blue podcast session 95 today is research Thursdays. And if you've been listening to the episodes of this week, we've been talking about manta rays. And of course, as promised, today on research Thursday, we are going to talk about movement patterns of manta rays, in particular, the resident reef manta rays that are found in Indonesia. So stay tuned for this exciting episode of the speak up for blue podcast. Welcome to the speak up for blue podcast, helping you get involved in ocean conservation. And now here's your host. He still puts his hands in the air because he doesn't care. Andrew Luen. Hey everybody, welcome back to another wonderful episode of the speaker for blue podcast, your voice for the ocean. I am your host, Angela and founder speak up for blue.com marine ecologist and self proclaimed ocean printer. And today is research Thursday. And I'm excited to present a paper by elitsa germanov and Andrea Marshall. They are off the authors are found at they work out of the marine mega foundation in Truckee, California in the US. We're going to talk today. They're titled their paper is running the gauntlet regional movement patterns of manta Alfredi, which are the resident marine, the resident reef manta rays, through a complex of parks and fisheries. So before we get into this episode, before we get into this episode, I want to just thanks our supporters at patreon.com. So the supporters, Dr. Judith Weiss, Judy and Ron and Claire and Chris jefford. Thank you very much for supporting the speaker for blue podcast supporting ocean conservation. What we do here is very important in communicating and raising issues of ocean conservation, educating people about what's happening in the world of conservation and hopefully inspiring them to take action in protecting the ocean through their daily lives and beyond that's what we do here. So you can help support our podcast by going to speak up for blue.com forward slash patreon P A T R E O N and you can support us on a monthly basis and we would like we would appreciate it quite a bit. I'm going to tell you that right now because we do this. This is a channel for the people by the people. This is what we do. We help you understand what's happening in ocean conservation and and we focus on implementing strategies for you guys to take so that you can actually implement them in your own daily life. And the more that you guys know about ocean and the issues are happening, the more you can implement the solutions, the more you want to implement the solution. So that's what we do here. And part of that strategy is research Thursdays. We tell you we pick, you know, the I have myself and Nathan and Kate, who's helps out with the logistics of the site and our podcast. We just, we get together and we talk about what we want to talk about. I usually tend to drive that that conversation, but we definitely talk about what kind of articles we want to look at. And this week has been manta ray focused. There was a there was an article at the beginning of the week that I went over where Peru and 12 other countries wanted to implement strategies to protect manta rays in particular the oceanic giant oceanic manoray. And then on Tuesday, we profile the manta sort of family. So there was the giant oceanic manoray. And of course, the more resident reef manorays. And then with today, or we talked yesterday at Carl Safina, which is essentially about everything. But I assure you, manoray protection is definitely on his docket. But also today, we're going to talk about manta rays and their movements. So we're looking at man manta Alfredi, which is the resident reef manta rays, which tend to travel between reefs. They do migrate as opposed to their name of resident, but they tend to migrate over a smaller period. However, this at this paper that we're going to talk about by let's German off and Andrea Marshall, talk about some pretty long movements that have been documented some migrations by this m alpha ready species. So maybe they're not as resident as we expected. But the premise of this paper is essentially, it's, you know, there's there's a pressure for ecotourism that is developing in Indonesia where this the study is based and all over the world for divers to go and dive with these manorays and see these manorays or kayakers to, you know, kayak over these manorays as they swim under them and just see the how giant they are and how wonderful they look. And so there's a big ecotourism industry that's really forming around these manorays. There's also a fisheries industry that's also that's been around for quite a while. However, that is not as sustainable. You're looking at a species that under the IUCN under the IUCN red list is categorized as vulnerable. And it's categorized as vulnerable because the species is a long lived species. It takes about 20 years, 15, 20 years to reach sexual maturity. When it does reach sexual maturity and it, it, it reproduces, it takes about a year to develop one pup. And then that pup will take another 15 to 20 years to reproduce or to get to sexual maturity where it can reproduce. So it's a slow moving species in terms of development. It's a large species. So it takes a while to grow to sexual maturity. So it's not a very good fishery species. You don't want to have a species that is takes a long time to get to adulthood sexual maturity and then only reproduce once every two years. It's just, it's just not in the books for fisheries. So now you have two competing industries, one that's not sustainable, one that's very sustainable in terms of the ecotourism. And now you've got to figure out how to protect these species and really focus on a more sustainable industry such as the ecotourism industry. So these researchers are really trying to figure out before they can actually conserve them. There's three protected areas that they're, that they're found in. They're found or that they can, that if they inhabit, there's sanctuary such as the Nusa Penida. I apologize for some of the pronunciations. The Gili Islands and the Komodo National Park. Now these are separated, you know, by distance and they're, they're separated just because of where they are and what they want to protect. However, these are aggregation areas for M. Alfredi man race. Okay. So these are areas that they, they're known to aggregate in large groups. So they're important, whether important feeding areas or maybe important breeding areas, we don't really know. However, they're very important. Now, the key is is between those areas, what happens? And do they, where do they actually go between, between those movements, between where they actually aggregate? How do they travel? Where do they travel? And should there be extra protections be put in? So that was the, that's the premise, the purpose of this, of this paper is to figure out what to do in those areas where they're not protected or where those areas are? Where do they go in between those areas? So this study was actually done using citizen science. And that's why I really wanted to cover this study because there's a, a program called Manta Matcher, which is an online database that integrates an automated or that integrates pictures from divers and citizen scientists who submit the other pictures to this database. It takes the pictures and it automatically matches using algorithm. Now what they do, Manta rays on the bottom on their underbelly have specific patterns and they're unique to each individual. So what this program does is it takes a matching algorithm and it matches those patterns to all the different photos and it actually creates a database of individuals and where they are. So when the photos take in the diver logs, where they took the photo, you have the actual photo. So you have proof that it's actually that individual, the size and stuff and the health. You can kind of tell from the picture, but it's also where they are, that location. So you have a location and you know what the individual is. The database is actually accumulated 820 individuals, which is the largest mannery database in the world. And now we know where all these individuals go because there's a huge ecotourism industry. There's citizen scientists who want to take pictures and videos of these species. And you can tell the individuals, just like you can tell like a marine, individual marine mammals, you can tell individual mannery. So they use this data and researchers use this data to find out where they are located in, in these set of parks, these strings of parks, and maybe even in between if there's a diver in between those parks. So they've taken all those locations, they've plotted those locations and they've overlaid them with a lot of other human activities to find out where they are most vulnerable in those, in those periods where they're between, where they're between parks. So that's really important to see. So that's what this database, that's what this whole project was. And of course, now that the main human threats that they go over that they're worried about are ship strikes from shipping channels and fisheries areas. Those are the major areas that they don't want these animals exposed to or minimize those, those where they expose. Now we have to categorize that the paper goes through why these mantos move from place to place. And they've attributed mostly to productivity in the ocean. You have to know one thing about manas. Manas will feed on plankton. So when we say there are areas of productive waters, that means there's a lot of plankton in those waters. If there's phytoplankton means there's there's some nutrients and allows phytoplankton, which is basically unicellular plants. They would get fed by, they would get fed on by or predated upon by zooplankton. And then the manneries will come in to eat the zooplankton. Now areas of large production is better for mantras because they can eat a lot more plankton, right? That's what they want to do. They want to eat more plankton. So they're going to go to high productive areas. So these areas that are protected are probably high protective area, highly productive areas. So they're areas where there might be an upwelling or there's a specific area that's highly productive, like seamount areas or anything that's special, right? We call them sort of distinctive areas and they go from place to place a distinctive area to distinctive area and they feed on those areas. Of course, there's probably there could be some areas of breeding, but they're still not really known where those areas specifically are. But they did find some one in Indonesia. I don't know the exact note, but we've covered it in Ocean Talk Friday. However, they did note that to get there to those breeding areas, those spawning areas, is difficult because they go through some major shipping areas, some shipping transportation areas or high traffic shipping areas. So that is something that we have to look out for. So you know, you got the shipping channels and you got the fisheries, you got to be careful. Now, one good thing is that mantras have been put on the Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species. So that's CITES. CITES is a preemptive measure to make sure that there's no international trade. So you cannot import manta meat or gill rakers into countries that abide by CITES rules, okay? Not legally anyway. On top of that, Indonesia has actually banned fishing of rays. So you cannot fish a manta ray. So now they've, they've, so you can tell which industry they've actually chosen. They've chosen the sustainable eco tourism industry. They're trying to get rid of the fisheries industry that will impact that eco tourism industry. Because in the past and research has shown that a live manta ray, just like a live shark and its live sea turtle are much better live and much more economical live and sustainable than a dead one. So we're seeing a lot more eco tourism industries pop up and divers and dive shops are really taking this into heart because who as a diver does not want to see a manta ray or swim with a manta ray or swim with a shark, you know, a whale shark or even a regular shark or not a regular shark, but smaller sharks, you know, we want to see these as a diver. I want to swim and saw my bucket list to do this kind of stuff. So they're very important species for the eco tourism industry, the diving industry. So what they know is the these research, they use the manta matcher to locate a number of different species in these areas. And what they found was that these that the migration routes are actually the some of the largest migrations and the fastest migrations they've seen to date in research of manta rays all around the world. There's a 450 kilometers straight line migration in less than 30 days going from going that there was observed in this species in this study by one individual, which is interesting because other individuals have traveled similar distances, but in longer periods of time, six months time. And in fact, actually, there was one that was found in Australia that that traveled over 2000 kilometers in 118 days or half a year. So that's kind of interesting to see what's happening there. So it's really interesting the way this study kind of came to be. They noticed that there is a lot of travel between these areas in the results and their implications for management was to know that actually knows that it was it was really it was highly correlated to productive production. Now, when that happens, and you see production happens on a seasonal basis. So when you see a highly productive areas, and you see, you know, there's going to be a migration of mantis to those areas, the areas between the protected areas, you can close down or you can regulate a lot better in specific times of years, if you know the manneries are going to be in those areas. So if you want to decrease ship strike between a, you know, a straight that's that's between two of the protected areas, that's highly that has a high traffic zone. Then what you do is you tell the boaters, educate the boaters that hey, there's there's actually a lot more manneries coming through, you have to be careful, you cannot strike them. Here are the different, the different regulations that you have to abide by the different protocols that you have to do when you go through these straights. And this done all over the world, it's actually a very effective way of managing, and there's there's a huge reduction in ship strikes when this stuff occurs. So knowing when these manneries are coming through these areas is very important from a management implication. So that always helps. And of course, banning fisheries in these areas, of course, will also help in this area. Now, of course, patrolling and enforcement is a different sort of beast on its own, because it's very difficult to patrol and manage. However, ecotourism industries might be able to help out with those areas. Divers can take photographs of maybe illegal poaching or legal fishing, and reported to the proper authorities. And then those people will get punished accordingly. So it's a very interesting study looking at migration rates. And it just shows the importance of the way we manage and the way we manage species like manneries is very difficult to manage when you don't have information on them. So if you don't know their movements or where they go, it becomes very difficult. Previous to the study, the authors mentioned that there were tags that were put on manneries, where the tags would go off when they became when they went near a receiver, and then that would that would ping, and then it would be logged into the receivers, and then the data would be taken by scientists. And you can tell where they were, how far they were away from the receivers, and then where they were located. However, some of this, they noticed that a lot of this, the manneries were outside the rain, went outside the range of the receiver. The receiver can only ping at a specific radius around where it's located. So if they're outside that distance, it's very difficult to find out where they are. So you can use a tool like man to match her in the citizen science that goes along with it to actually find manneries if they deviate from the areas of where there's a receiver. And it's obviously very effective when you have over 820 animals or individuals in the database, you can get a lot of data, that's a great data that you can get, a great amount of data that you can use for results and a paper like this. So I think it's really important that these studies continue, and we find out different parts of the world where these are. Citizen science is really playing an important role in the management of manneries as we get more information on where they are from divers around the world, and from the technology that they use, whether it be using a GoPro video, or you're using pictures, or however you're using them, you use them, you take the app, you an online tool, and you put it in, and then you get the individual in the database and where they are. I think it's really important for research purposes, for management purposes, and just for manneries in general. So I think this is really important, and I appreciate all the citizen scientists who actually contribute to this area. We will put the links in the show notes for the man to match her and other citizen science programs associated with this, as well as the PDF and the link for this study, so you can take a look at it as well. And I'd like to thank the authors for producing this, for producing this paper. So that's Alyssa Germanoff and Andrea Marshall. Thank you very much for this paper. We really appreciate it, and thank you for letting us share this. And they posted it, they actually published it on PLOS-1, which is an open source journal that I've been using quite a bit for these research Thursdays, and it allows me to view and share this study worldwide, really, in all my links. So it's awesome that we can do that. So thank you very much to the authors for publishing on PLOS-1, and thank you for PLOS-1 for just being in existence. I really appreciate it. Anyway, if you want to support the podcast, the Speak Up For Blue podcast, you can do so at SpeakUpForBlue.com/patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N. You can do so, you can, it's a monthly support system, so just keep that in mind if you want to support, in case you are supporting a lot of money per month. I don't want you to get, I don't want you to get nicked for that, and you not realize it. However, I really appreciate any kind of support that you can give us. It's a lot of work to put these things together to dive into. It's a lot of time, a lot of energy, as well as a lot of money to put into the audio, the microphone, the receivers, and all that kind of stuff. So your support is greatly appreciated. But that's it for me. Thank you for listening to Speak Up For Blue podcast. I am your host, Andrew Lewin. Happy Thursday, the weekend is almost here, and happy conservation. [Music]