LARGEST MANTA RAY SANCTUAR FULL

Syukur Seno, a former Lamakera fish buyer, remembers meeting the shark fin trader who first started collecting gills in the island community. Manta gills are particularly highly prized due to their large size. Used in traditional medicine, ray gills are alleged to cure a wide range of health issues, from acne to cancer, although these qualities have not been scientifically proven. Dried in the sun on lines of bamboo poles, the meat would be locally consumed or traded with neighbouring villages and islands for other necessities.īut in the early 2000s, mantas started to become commercially valuable in Lamakera due to a rapid growth in demand, mainly from China, for their gills, a part previously left to rot on the beaches. In the past, mantas were hunted mainly for food. Part of an island chain along the southern edge of Indonesia, Solor is also on the migration path of a range of large marine species. The species are commonly found in the plankton-rich waters around this remote community, where people rely on the sea for their livelihoods due to the relatively barren nature of the island’s soils.

Hunting mantas has been a long-standing tradition in Lamakera. Taken in 2011, this photo shows Lamakera hunters pulling a harpooned manta on board their boat (Image © Paul Hilton) According to Mochamad Iqbal Herwata Putra of marine conservation charity the Misool Foundation, this makes them particularly vulnerable to “high fishing activity”. Like other large marine species, they live a long life and have slow reproductive rates, giving birth to only one or two pups every 2-5 years. The giant manta has a wingspan that can reach more than seven metres. Mantas are the largest of the mobulid ray family. More specifically, it followed a 2013 decision by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to add mantas to Appendix II, which requires member countries to strictly regulate trade in the species. The move was prompted by a sharp decline in global manta populations caused by overfishing the two species were listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) red list in 2011.

It effectively created the world’s largest manta ray sanctuary, with fishing banned across Indonesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone, an area of ocean about six million square kilometres in size. It became illegal to use any part of the animal even when accidentally caught, except for “research and development”.

LARGEST MANTA RAY SANCTUAR FULL

Indonesia’s 2014 legislation gave full protection throughout their life cycles to both species of manta – the giant manta ( mobula birostris )and the reef manta ( mobula alfredi). We’d get arrested for it.” Lamakera fisher Udin Umar holds up the harpoon he formerly used to hunt mantas (Image: Nabiha Shahab/China Dialogue) Protecting the mantas “Before it was banned, I could catch 20 in one season,” he says.

He doesn’t mention that at one point he could have earned double that by selling the gills, used by mantas to filter plankton from the water. He remembers when landing just one manta would fetch three million Indonesian rupiah (USD$212), enough to pay off his debts and fund his children’s education. He was forced to hang up his harpoon in 2014 when Indonesia banned both the catching of these ocean giants and trade in their parts. Like many others in his community of Lamakera, Umar used to be a manta ray hunter. Yesterday, he caught four spinetail devil rays and a bucket of small selar fish in the tropical waters off his home island of Solor in southern Indonesia.

Largest manta ray sanctuar