Tracking the World's Manta and Devil Rays

The Manta Trust coordinates mobulid ray research and conservation across more than a dozen countries, from its flagship Maldives Manta Conservation Programme to projects in the Seychelles, Mexico, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Its MantaBase citizen-science photo-ID database, live since 2012, has helped identify over 10,000 individual reef and oceanic manta rays from more than 100,000 sightings submitted from over 70 countries. That research has directly underpinned national manta ray protections in Indonesia, Peru and Thailand and helped secure the species' 2022 uplisting to Endangered on the IUCN Red List.