How will I receive my tickets? When you purchase from, you’ll receive an email shortly afterward with a ticket for each individual in your party. Joshua Stewart, a conservation ecologist and a National Geographic explorer who discovered the potential manta ray nursery site in the Gulf of Mexico, was also surprised by the potential nursery’s proximity to people.Do I need to choose the attractions before I purchase? You can decide which attractions to visit after purchasing, but we suggest making advance reservations where possible once you receive your CityPASS® tickets. “They are right under our nose in such an intensely populated area, and they still remained undetected for so long.” Human conflicts “This study confirms that we know so little about these animals,” adds Csilla Ari, a professor at the University of South Florida who also works with the Manta Pacific Research Foundation.
(No one has ever seen a manta ray give birth in the wild, and their reproductive habits are largely a mystery.) It is very rare to see almost exclusively juveniles in one area, as we do in southeast Florida,” she says.Įven so, mantas can travel long distances, so the only way to confirm that a nursery exists in South Florida is to outfit juvenile mantas with satellite and acoustic tags, which Pate has begun in coordination with NOAA. “In many areas where manta rays are studied, it is uncommon to see juvenile manta rays. It’s also possible that South Florida’s warm, shallow water helps the young animals regulate their body temperatures and grow more quickly. The unusually high number of young animals repeatedly seen in the same place indicates the presence of a nursery, says Pate. ( Learn why manta rays swim in mesmerizing circles.) She spotted a few of the 59 rays multiple times over the years, including one she and her colleagues named Stevie Nicks and a particularly omnipresent ray called Gillie, whom they spotted 23 times. Later, she also incorporated aerial photography from drones and small aircraft into her data. “I can tell you that I’ve identified every single manta-shaped rock in South Florida,” she quips. Standing on the bow as the boat slowly motored along, Pate would look for large, dark shapes moving over the white sand. “Right under our nose”įor her research, Pate borrowed her grandfather’s fishing boat and spent as many days as she could combing the shallow waters between Jupiter Island and Boynton Beach. There is also genetic evidence, to be published in a forthcoming paper, that the Florida manta rays belong to a third, new species of manta ray, Pate adds.
added the giant manta ray as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The International Union for Conservation of Nature considers both manta species, the giant manta ray (which can reach widths of 29 feet) and the reef manta ray as vulnerable to extinction.
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That's why newfound nursery may reveal more about this little-understood creature, and how to conserve it. “There’s so little we know about mantas,” she adds, such as where they give birth, how long they live, how they choose mates. “It was amazing because it was an unexpected finding, and the other two nursery grounds were also just identified in 20,” in Indonesia and the Gulf of Mexico, says Pate, founder and lead scientist of the Florida Manta Project.
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