Become a Manta Hero

Project Manta relies heavily on citizen scientists. Water users who are contributing photographs and observations to the Project Manta database.

Receive updates from the research team and share your own manta ray observations with the manta community.

Follow Project Manta on these social media platforms:

• Facebook
• Instagram 
• Twitter

What photo ID can tell us: 

Photo identification allows us to follow individual manta rays in the wild to find out information about:

• population size and demography;
• growth rates and age of maturity;
• pregnancy and reproductive activity;
• movements and habitat preferences;
• incidence of injuries.

Meet, Inspector Clouseau ('Pinky')

Spotted! The world's only pink manta ray, affectionately named Inspector Clouseau (aka 'Pinky') by the Project Manta team.

Manta rays are usually predominently white or black on their undersides, so you can image how fascinated we are by Pinky. A tiny skin biopsy has confirmed his skin is actually pink (no clever editing here!) and because he's continued to exhibit normal behaviours, we're not concerned about his health.

Inspector Clouseau has been seen a number of times at Lady Elliot Island, usually engaging in courtship. As you can imagine, he's quite popular! 

We hope to unlock the mystery of why his skin is pink as part of our research.

Video credit: Ryan Jeffery