![]() ![]() The unique shallow draft allows us to get to the very best snorkelling sites that the spectacular Ningaloo Reef has to offer! On this six to seven hour adventure you have the opportunity to snorkel on the magnificent Ningaloo coral reef, seeing hundreds of types of reef fish and exciting aquatic life such as reef sharks, turtles, giant clams and octopus. Our Ultimate Wildlife Experience - an amazing day on board our state-of-the-art eco tour vessel, Kurni-Ku, with its large upper deck viewing area makes it perfect for observing the tropical reef and all of its inhabitants. Why not embrace this opportunity to go snorkelling in Coral Bay with one of the largest winged creatures that inhabit our ocean? The highlight of this fantastic marine ecotour is the opportunity to swim with the awe inspiring manta ray, which the professional Eco tours staff will endeavour to deliver, in what has become almost a daily event in Coral Bay on the Ningaloo Reef. “Let’s reduce boat speed in this area and give the animals a chance to get away.This full day action packed marine ecotour adventure includes wet suits and snorkel equipment, fantastic food (morning tea, full lunch and afternoon snacks), drinks (coffee, tea, milo and cordial). “But as those fishing impacts are being addressed more and more, it’s becoming clear to us as a community that we also have to take into consideration the effects of sublethal impacts-such as boat strikes.” “Those are without a doubt the acute threats to populations,” Stewart says. For the last decade, says Stewart, biologists have been most concerned about people fishing for mantas or catching them by accident when trawling for other species. These injuries can leave them at greater risk to predators and infection, and could impact their growth and ability to successfully reproduce. Yet, they still spend a lot of time basking and feeding at the surface, which makes them vulnerable to boat strikes. Unlike marine mammals and sea turtles, manta rays are fish and do not need to come to the surface to breathe. “It’s definitely going to make us think twice as we go through our ID catalogs and classify injuries.” “I don’t think I would have classified the healed scar pattern as a propeller injury if I had only seen the finished product,” says Stewart. About 13 percent of the mantas had scars similar to Whoopi’s, wounds that had been cataloged as unknown injuries. After reassessing the catalog, the percentage of mantas with scars due to clear predation attempts dropped from about 12 percent to just 2.6 percent, or 29 individuals. ![]() Some jagged wing tips thought to have been caused by shark teeth were more likely propeller wounds, they write in their paper. It turns out mantas were probably getting hit by boats more than previously thought. This inspired them to go back in their catalog and reexamine and reclassify other wounds. Had the researchers only seen the healed scar tissue, they probably would have classified Whoopi’s wound as a shark bite or predation attempt, says Dudgeon. “They were able to meticulously document something we had talked about anecdotally, but never quantified or extensively measured.” “It’s a really cool study,” says Joshua Stewart, a marine biologist with Manta Trust who was not involved with the work. After 295 days, they had closed by 95 percent. After a month, the wounds had healed by about a third. “The wound healed quite rapidly,” says Dudgeon. This has never been done before for rays, and only in two other studies for sharks. Dudgeon, a marine biologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, and a team of scientists decided to follow the ray and watch how her cuts healed over time. On June 30, 2015, Whoopi showed up with a fresh injury on her right wing tip: a series of five sharp slices that clearly looked like a propeller strike.Ĭhristine L. Whoopi has been sighted every year since 2004, when the study began. Individual manta rays are identifiable by the patterns of spots and coloration on their bellies, similar to how humans can be identified by unique fingerprints. ![]() Others have old wounds that are harder to classify. Some mantas sport semicircular missing chunks that clearly look like shark bites, while others have V-shaped cuts or thin slices that look like wounds from being entangled in fishing line or hit by boats. As part of that catalog, the biologists document and classify any wounds or scars they see on the animals. Scientists have studied the rays in Australia’s Ningaloo Reef, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, since 2004 and amassed a catalog of 1,071 individuals as of 2018. Off the coast of Western Australia, a reef manta ray named Whoopi has helped researchers uncover a previously underreported threat to her species-boat strikes.
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