The Manta Caribbean Mission is doing very important work to catalogue and defend large manta rays off the Caribbean coast of Mexico – Mark ‘Crowley’ Russell talks to its charismatic founder.
Creator’s observe: between this text being printed in our print journal (June 2025) and making its means on-line two months later, the third species of manta – the Atlantic Manta (Mobula yarae) has been formally recognized. This makes the article a bit outdated, however the Manta Caribbean Mission’s work much more very important.
Phrases by Mark ‘Crowley’ Russell, Images by Valentina Cucchiara
Inform me a bit about how you bought began,’ I ask firstly of our dialog, and an hour later, I’m nonetheless listening to the power of nature that’s Karen ‘Manza’ Fuentes, founder and director of Manta Mexico Caribé – the Manta Caribbean Mission.
Born and raised in Mexico Metropolis, Karen graduated from college in 2008 with a level in tourism and administration. It was throughout her research that she set her sights on transferring to the coast.
‘I used to be at all times eager about animals, and I actually beloved geography,’ she says. ‘When it was time to organize my thesis, I wanted to create one thing that allowed me to get into the world of coral reefs, so I created a sustainable administration proposal for the coral reefs in Cozumel.
‘I at all times beloved administration and coverage making, it’s one in every of my strengths. However after I completed faculty, I used to be like, “growth” – I by no means went again.’
Her work with reef administration noticed her transfer from Cozumel to Playa del Carmen and finally to Isla Mujeres, a small island off the coast of Cancún on the northeastern tip of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.
The area is known for one of many largest whale shark aggregations on the planet. Between June and September annually, tons of of the large fish collect to feast on the eggs of spawning bonito, the native title given to little tunny (Euthynnus alletteratus), which collect to spawn in huge numbers between June and July.
The bonito are following the large plankton blooms generated on the assembly level of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, feeding on the the smaller fish and crustaceans that accompany them.
The blooms additionally entice one other giant pelagic customer: Mobula birostris, the large or oceanic manta ray.
As quickly as she noticed them, Karen knew she had discovered her calling. ‘I had adopted manta ray documentaries for years, however the first time I noticed them within the water I used to be in shock,’ she says. ‘I used to be considering that they’re so stunning and somebody needs to be finding out them, however no person was.’
FILLING A GAP
Karen had already been working with native tour operators (whale shark tourism is the primary supply of revenue on Isla Mujeres) for a number of years via her reef administration work, which offered her with a platform to determine the Manta Caribbean Mission in 2013.
She was aided by the Manta Trust, a UK-based conservation organisation based by Dr Man Stevens in 2011, now an umbrella for a community of 31 affiliated tasks all over the world.
‘The Manta Belief taught me all the things,’ says Karen. ‘They have been my mentors from the start, and basic for my development into marine sciences. They be certain we use customary methodologies for all the information we accumulate, and we work with over 30 tasks as a community, to feed one another with extra manta ray data.’
The Manta Caribbean Mission began out with only a manta ID catalogue, a database used to file particular person manta rays, which could be recognized via the distinctive markings on their undersides.
Twelve years later, Karen’s database is among the largest within the area, holding data of greater than 800 people.
‘It’s a fantastic achievement and helps us perceive extra in regards to the inhabitants dynamics and habitat use of the species on this area,’ says Karen. ‘Residing on [Isla Mujeres] has helped me to determine relationships with the native individuals, so we are able to study extra about the primary threats to mantas, which embody bycatch and ghost gear.’
Ghost gear – deserted, misplaced and discarded fishing gear – is a world drawback, indiscriminately killing manta rays and different giant species that turn out to be entangled within the nets and contours.
The individuals finest positioned to report each ghost gear findings and manta ray sightings are the individuals who spend their lives at sea, and Karen has devoted herself to constructing a bond of belief with the islanders, who’ve a protracted historical past with their fisheries.
Like many small communities, they’re mistrustful of outsiders.
‘I can not preserve the monitoring on a regular basis as a result of it’s very costly,’ says Karen, ‘so we depend on our neighborhood. We have to go between 15 to 60 miles offshore, which is an enormous distance for us. You’ll be able to’t try this till the fishermen and locals belief you and don’t see you as a risk, as a result of different researchers have taken benefit of their conventional data.’
THREATS TO MANTAS
Mexico’s Caribbean manta rays haven’t confronted fairly the identical risk as their Indo-Pacific relations, whose gill-rakers – the tissue between a manta’s gills that strains plankton from the water – are wanted as an ingredient in ‘conventional’ Chinese language drugs.
As a substitute, some mantas caught round Isla Mujeres have been beforehand utilized by the locals for shark fishing, as a result of they have been a plentiful supply of meat to bait the hooks.
Since 2019, nevertheless, and thanks partially to Karen’s work, all mobulid rays – which incorporates mantas and their devil-ray cousins – have been totally protected beneath Mexican regulation.
Scuba diving and snorkelling with the mantas is technically forbidden by regulation, however snorkel journeys to see the whale sharks between Could and September will not be. As mantas are thought-about a ‘companion species’ to the whale sharks, nevertheless, ought to they seem throughout a whale shark snorkel tour, vacationers have the possibility to swim with simultaneous aggregations of each species of ocean large.
Tour operators are sure by a strict code of conduct governing interactions with the animals. This code, which Karen developed with the help of the Manta Belief, helps to cut back stress on the animals and promote their conservation, an particularly essential objective, on condition that Caribbean mantas might be a unique species than the 2 presently recognized to science.
Manta rays have been first formally described as Raja birostris in 1792 by the German doctor Johann Julius Walbaum. They got many alternative names earlier than Manta birostris turned customary, however have been thought-about a single species till 2009, when Dr Andrea Marshall of the Marine Megafauna Basis (MMF) printed a paper formally describing a second species, Manta alfredi with the frequent title ‘reef manta.’ (Each species have been reclassified as Mobula in 2017.)
SPOT THE DIFFERENCE
Reef mantas spend most of their time near shore and are significantly smaller than oceanic mantas, with a mean disc width (wingspan) of three.5m in adults, in comparison with the 7m disc width of their extremely migratory cousins.
The 2 species have markedly totally different spot patterns on their undersides, and oceanic mantas have a really distinctive black and white ‘T’ form on their dorsal surfaces, in addition to an inert backbone on their tails that isn’t present in reef mantas.
Even within the early days of her challenge, Karen believed the Mexican Caribbean mantas have been totally different from different populations of oceanic manta rays, equivalent to these discovered within the Indian Ocean and Asia Pacific area, together with the Pacific coast of Mexico and Ecuador.
‘I assumed they regarded totally different from different manta populations, however I wasn’t certain,’ she says. ‘I went to coach as a scientist by travelling to different Manta Belief websites, and from there was in a position to begin studying in regards to the variations.
‘The common measurement of our mantas is 5.5m throughout and the colouration patterns are fully totally different. They’ve a mixture of reef manta and oceanic manta colouration patterns, which I imagine is proof they’re genetically totally different.’
The mantas of the Mexican Caribbean have been provisionally named Atlantic mantas and categorised Mobula cf birostris (the place cf denotes uncertainty over the classification).
Formal identification is ready on the publication of a genetic examine by scientists at MMF, however most manta specialists imagine the third species shall be confirmed.
POPULATION PUZZLES
Whereas affirmation of the third species could also be on maintain, Karen’s work strikes on apace. Her crew is now collaborating with the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) within the US and different regional manta analysis tasks to check the actions of the mantas.
Utilizing satellite tv for pc tags and sightings information they’re making an attempt to find out the place the animals go to mate and provides beginning. Potential nurseries have been discovered within the Flower Backyard Banks space of the Gulf of Mexico and one other close to Florida, however so far there was little proof of crossover between the totally different populations, implying that they won’t be as migratory as first thought.
‘Every space has ID catalogues and we don’t have a match with any of the Gulf of Mexico manta rays populations, and never with the Florida manta rays both,’ says Karen.
‘It’s fascinating as a result of we all know they journey lengthy distances, so the place do they go? It could possibly be that every inhabitants is resident, nevertheless it is also the case that they journey to different elements of the world, however come again to the identical place after they feed – which 90 per cent of the time is once we see them.’
Evidently, Karen’s work takes an excessive amount of time and requires a big amount of cash. She is reliant on grants, charitable donations and a programme by which scholar volunteers will pay a payment to work with the muse (see field beneath).
‘We’re busy on a regular basis, and I’m the one individual within the workplace,’ she says. ‘I’ve nice individuals working within the area, however I additionally need to handle all of the funding, which is an enormous problem, particularly since Covid.’
Grant functions are a posh and arduous course of, taking as much as two months every. With totally different grant home windows open at totally different occasions and funding intervals restricted, it’s a cycle that by no means stops. Karen estimates she spends as much as half her work time on fundraising.
‘Even you probably have a fantastic model, you’re competing with tons of of different tasks,’ she explains. ‘You even have to consider how your tasks are helpful not just for the species but additionally the neighborhood, which has at all times been my technique.’
Karen can be liable for the Manta Caribbean Mission’s funds, its volunteer and coaching programmes, permits, experiences, statistics, the ID database and working the challenge’s on-line store – and but nonetheless finds time to move out to sea to examine on her mantas.
IT TAKES A VILLAGE
Throughout our discuss Karen repeatedly references the challenge’s neighborhood engagement – it’s clearly one thing wherein she, as an outsider now thought-about virtually native, takes nice delight.
There are between 5 and 10 individuals working for the challenge at anyone time, together with an all-female crew helping with the analysis, plus 4 native captains and a handful of different islanders who assist out when wanted.
Locals now report manta sightings and the presence of ghost gear with out being prompted to take action, even inviting Karen to sail with them so she will acquire extra perception into how they work and which species they’re discovering.
‘My crew is 100 per cent from Isla Mujeres. They’re all Mexicans born on the island, so they’re household, and now I really feel like a member of the family with them,’ she says.
‘Residing right here has allowed me to know not solely the animal aspect of conservation, but additionally the human standpoint, the place conservation and neighborhood have to match with an excellent technique to achieve our targets.
‘It made me realise that we have to construct energy throughout the neighborhood, as a result of ultimately, me and captains will not be those which can be going to be caring for the pure sources sooner or later, however their sons and their daughters.’
As for the way forward for the Manta Caribbean Mission? ‘I see it thriving, positively,’ says Karen. ‘The challenges make us stronger: we’re a robust neighborhood, and we are able to obtain our targets – sluggish however regular – to create a motion that may make the distinction for manta rays.’
HOW TO GET INVOLVED
The Manta Caribbean Mission affords alternatives for fee-paying volunteers to hitch the challenge at common intervals annually.
The three-week programme (on the time of writing, July 2025) prices US$1,650 for 2025 and contains lodging, area journeys and coaching to help with manta analysis and fisheries surveys, weekly displays and different academic actions.
Flights, meals and different private bills will not be included. Locations are restricted to 5 individuals per programme and topic to approval based mostly on a web-based utility and video interview. Discover out extra at mantacaribbeanproject.org.
Alternatives in different areas can be found via the Manta Belief at mantatrust.org.
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