Curious Juvenile Mantas Visit Hurawalhi’s Dream Island this Season

July 2023

Lhaviyani Atoll, comprising 54 islands, sits in the north-east of the Maldives approximately 145 km north of Male. Our MMCP project base there is found in the northern tip of the atoll at Hurawalhi Island Resort, in partnership with Prodivers Dive Centre. This atoll is home to over 430 individual reef manta rays and for a few special months of the year we can see these mantas feeding right from the shore of the island.

During the northeast monsoon season, a combination of the prevailing winds, tides and currents altogether create just the right conditions to concentrate plankton in various shallow lagoons around the atoll, making perfect pockets of plankton for the mantas to feast on. One of these lagoons is an area right on the doorstep of Hurawalhi, a shallow lagoon buffered from the depths outside the atoll by the aptly named Hurawalhi “Dream Island” sandbank. It is here that the mantas come to feed during our peak season and this year was an exceptional one for encountering juvenile manta rays.

Searching for manta rays in Lhaviyani atoll, Maldives © Khoa Chau

As adults, reef manta rays have a wingspan of 3-3.5m on average, but the juveniles can be as small as 1.5m across - not the smallest rays in the sea by any means, but swamped by their adult counterparts. At present, we only have 1 confirmed Manta Ray Nursery in the Maldives, at Maamunagau Lagoon in Raa atoll, a special location that over the years has welcomed large numbers of pregnant females as well as manta pups. However, here in Lhaviyani we were also lucky to experience a burst of juveniles at the beginning of the year.

Making eye contact with a juvenile manta ray in Veligadu Falhu, Lhaviyani © Frances Budd

An encounter with a manta ray is truly breathtaking. Here in Lhaviyani, the mature adults are often seen spending time on cleaning stations or gracefully surface feeding, elegant but powerful whatever the weather. But, encountering a juvenile is completely different. They are playful and curious. Sometimes, they swim right close to look at you or other times flap about upside down. Perhaps we are the first people they have seen in the water. We don’t often see these energetic juveniles on the cleaning stations where the adult mantas are, instead they seem to visit smaller less popular stations where they’re not competing with the big guys. One of these stations is in the lee of the Hurawalhi Dream island in a small area locally known as ‘coral garden’ with several small coral blocks dotted along the sandy bottom.

A reef manta ray feeding near Dream Island, Lhaviyani © Khoa Chau

When we (not just us manta researchers but you!) capture an ID shot of a manta ray that is new to our database, which was often the case for the juveniles, it is a very special opportunity to name the manta ray. Many of the mantas we see here in Lhaviyani are old friends who have visited feeding sites for years, so it’s always exciting to name a new face. Sometimes I can’t believe that every single manta has a completely unique belly spot pattern, but we certainly had some new combinations this year.

A curious reef manta ray feeding in Lhaviyani © Frances Budd

So, where are they now? Luckily for us, these juveniles don’t seem to have traveled too far just yet. Although the Southwestern monsoon has arrived and there’s little plankton in the shallow waters for them to feed on, they’ve been spotted by divers cruising around the northwestern reefs of Lhaviyani Atoll not far from the shallow lagoon where we first encountered them. Perhaps once they’re a little bigger they will venture out into further waters.

We hope that we’ll be seeing these mantas again over the coming years and that we will have the opportunity to monitor their growth. For now, we can only wonder if they will become one of our Lhaviyani locals, or whether they will swim off to explore the other atolls of the Maldives.