World Manta Day event in London and other manta news this month

20 July, 2022

WORLD MANTA DAY: AN EVENING WITH DOUG ALLAN

Join us this World Manta Day on September 17th at the Royal Geographical Society in London for 'World Manta Day: An evening with Doug Allan'. Doug is a multi Emmy and BAFTA award-winning wildlife cameraman and long-time patron of the Manta Trust. He will be giving a talk about his many adventures behind the camera while he films wildlife all over the world and specifically his experience filming manta rays.

Venue: Royal Geographical Society, London
Date: September 17th 2022
Time: 19:30 - 21:00
Price: £15

Buy tickets

MANTA WATCH NZ WEBSITE LAUNCH

Our friends at Manta Watch New Zealand, have just launched an amazing new website, with tons of useful information, including educational resources, scientific research, information about the project and a place to submit your manta sightings.
If you are interested in finding out more about the work they do, or how you can support them, check out the brand new website!

UNPROTECTED RAYS IN SRI LANKA

Sri Lanka is one of the largest mobula fisheries in the world and is catching species at a faster rate than they can reproduce. In addition, the average sizes of most mobulids landed are shrinking which is an indication that populations are overfished and collapsing.

Read the full story here. 

WORLD OCEANS DAY EVENT

We had a great time at last week's World Oceans Day event at the National Maritime Museum in London. Thank you to everyone who came to Jen's talk, and who visited our stand to chat manta and devil rays. We had a great day discussing marine conservation issues and training lots of junior scientists in manta IDing!

OCEAN OPPORTUNITIES FUNDING

We are excited to announce that our project - Empowering Women through Ocean Opportunities - is one of nine to win the Luc Hoffmann Institute, Impact Hub and IUCN CEESP's Future of Conservation NGOs Innovation Challenge. The team members, Flossy, Maeesha and Alun, won €5000 for the project and to take part in a co-learning programme with these organisations, which will help to drive the project forward. The project was selected for its ability to reimagine the conservation space to create a just and equitable future. Congratulations team!

World Manta Day Competition

This World Manta Day, we want your help designing some new Manta Trust merchandise. Get your art supplies ready and your creativity flowing! Designs should be focused on mantas and devil rays and can include an aspect of World Manta Day but they don’t have to. Please think about how the design will look on a garment.

The selected winner, chosen by the Manta Trust core team, will have their credited design added to t-shirts, hoodies and tote bags which will raise money for manta ray conservation worldwide. The Manta Trust will have the right to use the art in future media and fundraising uses. The winner will also receive two tickets to our ‘World Manta Day: An Evening with Doug Allan’ event in London on September 17th (travel and accommodation not provided and no cash alternative).

Submit your designs digitally as a high-resolution photo or scan by August 31st to [email protected].

Join the Cyclone!

Last month a few of the Manta Trust team were invited to Cameroon to work alongside the African Marine Mammal Conservation Organization - AMMCO. We were particularly interested in landings of mobula rays in the fish markets but during the trip, we also learnt about the state of shark and ray fisheries in Cameroon, surveyed numerous fish markets and trained the AMMCO team in data collection methodologies and shark and ray dissections. We were then invited to give some talks and run a dissection workshop during the science component of the Steet Whale event in Kribi.

The stories we heard, and the conservationists we met who are working hard to protect Cameroon’s rich biodiversity were inspiring. Knowledge and data about sharks and rays along the west African coast is growing but it is a race against time to understand these species before they disappear forever.

Join The Cyclone to watch the full video in this month’s update.

Join the Cyclone