![]() ![]() Manta rays are particularly vulnerable to fishing because they reproduce slowly they take 10 to 15 years to become mature, and give birth to one pup every two to seven years, says Fernando's colleague Josh Stewart. wide range of fishing gear including gill nets, purse seines and long lines. This is a large ray, but they can get bigger, he adds. recognised species, the reef manta ray Manta alfredi and the giant manta ray. The ray in the photograph likely measured around 20 to 23 feet wide, says Fernando, and reports claim it weighed more than 2,200 pounds. The Manta Trust partnered in this project with a local NGO called Planeta Océano and WildAid, and was funded in part by the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund. On the other hand, Manta Trust has already helped train half a dozen fishermen in the area to make a living off rays in a different way: by taking tourists out to see the animals, to snorkel and swim with, he says. Manta ray (Manta birostris) caught in gill net, Huatampo, Mexico, Gulf of California, Pacific Ocean. In this case, the unlucky ray, was reportedly sold for a pittance, many times less than the price people pay for tuna and other desired species, Fernando says. The manta ray was caught in northwestern Peru near the town of Tumbe. such as by-catch in gillnets, which has halved their global population. Thus rays are worth more alive than dead. The largest identified populations of both reef and giant manta rays in Africa. Using harpoons to impale the surface feeding animals, and gill nets to entangle and drown them, the rays were easy targets and their numbers soon began to. This has helped drive down the numbers of manta and mobular rays far enough that they are now considered vulnerable (a classification second to "endangered") by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, an environmental group.įishermen also increasingly seek out rays for their gill plates, which the Chinese value for their supposed medicinal value, says Fernando, who is also a doctoral student at Linnaeus University in Sweden studying the biology and ecology of mobular and manta rays in the Indian Ocean.Īn environmental group called WildAid calculates that the gill plate trade brings in $30 million per year however, manta ray tourism brings in $140 million worldwide. ![]() The case highlights the problem of bycatch, the accidental entanglement and killing of animals like rays, sharks and large mammals such as whales and dolphins, in nets meant to catch smaller animals. ![]() These methods have caught on in the Maldives, which currently brings in more than $8 million in tourism related to manta rays alone, he says. The conservation nonprofit he works for, Manta Trust, advocates for using small nets for catching specific schools of fish or rod-and-reel fishing, which can much better target individual species. Fishermen use gill nets to catch tuna and billfish but the gear often snag larger animals like rays, he adds. The fishermen accidentally caught the animal-a giant oceanic manta ray ( Manta birostris)-likely while using a device called a gill net in northwest Peru, says researcher Daniel Fernando. Last week a fisherman in northwestern Peru caught an enormous manta ray, and photos of the dead, bloody animal have angered conservationists around the world. ![]()
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