Protecting Mantas: Community Conservation Power

Blog 2nd of September to 7th of September

As September was about to begin, we, the 2024 September Volunteer group, traveled from all around the world to gather in Isla Mujeres in the Mexican Caribbean to spend our time working with the Manta Caribbean Project. We: Amy, Paloma and Nina, are very excited to learn all things manta and, just as important, all things conservation work!

At the start of the week, we met up with our team leader and project leader Karen Fuentes and made an outline of the plans for the next month: not only do we have one field trip planned for every week, we also have the International Manta Day on the 17th of September! For us all these events are very exciting, because we will not only work in close proximity with the mantas, but we also get to share our love for these magnificent animals at the local school and get to teach the kids about the importance of protecting the mantas.

We got to work right away and started gathering ideas and material that we will use for the world manta day. To minimize waste, we try to get our cardboard boxes from the nearby store and reuse some materials previous volunteers had already gathered. We have some fun activities planned for that day!

The next day we were fortunate enough to get a tour of the island by local Alejandro on a golf cart. Not only did he show us the best places to relax by the beach, or the best place to eat tacos, but he also showed us where the hospital is and where we must meet near the marina for field trips.

Although Isla Mujeres is relatively small, this tour was great to get some more insight on the island, and it made us feel right at home. We took this chance to swim in the crystal-clear waters and get a look at the locals in the water (I mean the fish!) before we headed back at the end of the day.

On Wednesday we got familiarized with the kind of work we would be doing during this month. Starting by receiving an interesting presentation about the mantas, as it is crucial for us to know what we can expect of these animals while we are in the water with them. It also gave us a realistic idea about the conservation work that has already been done researching mantas and the questions that are still waiting to be answered.

Equipment training: we would be using during our field trips. Not only does the Manta Caribbean Project gather information about the mantas, but they also take a look at plankton communities with a plankton-net and collect data such as water temperature and water salinity using CTD deployment.

Next, we took our time to understand the Manta Caribbean Project database. In this database we find the information Karen and her team have gathered in the last years about the individual mantas they have encountered. A great part of conservation work has to do with gathering information, processing the data and, further on, to understand it and draw conclusions from it. It is important for us volunteers to process this information accordingly and we spent the rest of the afternoon identifying mantas.

Thursday, we had our most exciting day yet, as we were about to go on our first field trip! The day started very early and by 7:30 we were already on the boat and on our way to the first spot where we hoped to encounter our first manta. But sadly, we didn´t find any mantas, so we went on our way to a second spot, where a manta had been spotted. During this journey one of the two engines of our boat broke down and even though we were slowed down, we continued the journey, and, at the second spot, we finally saw our first manta.

Karen got into the water with us and showed us the best way to approach a manta and to take an ID picture of it. This was a hard task, because, although mantas seem so peaceful and relaxed in the water, they are super-fast and keeping up with them left us all breathless and a bit sore. But I can assure you, that they´re even more beautiful and majestic than one can even imagine.

We spend ten hours on the boat out in the open ocean that day and returned to the island with some sunburn and feeling tired, but with a sense of accomplishment and very happy.

The following day we processed and analyzed the data we collected during our field trip. This was pretty much our “average day at the office” and we spent our time ID-ing mantas and working on some infographics on zooplankton and associated fauna species. These infographics will be used during workshops and presentations, both here on the island and online.

As volunteers, the MCP TEAM gives us a glimpse into almost every part of owning and managing an NGO, so we get the chance to work on our social media presence, too, by helping her writing posts for Instagram, or this blog. :) That way we get a realistic view of all the hard work that goes into the work of a marine conservationist.

Saturday was our last working day this week. We volunteers spent our morning doing some office work and organizing ourselves to get some materials we still need in preparation of the world manta day on the 17th of this month.

We were also lucky enough to go back to the marina in the afternoon and there Karen and Jesús, our captain, showed us how to filet lionfish. Lionfish is s fish-species native to the Indo-Pacific and has been introduced into the oceans all around the world, because their owners, who kept them as pets in an aquarium, wanted to release them. Lionfish don´t have natural predators in the Caribbean, reproduce at incredible speeds and are poisonous and carnivorous, giving them the best weapons to literally take over all environments in the Caribbean.

On Isla Mujeres there are initiatives led by local communities supporting conservation projects subsidized by Conanp where people and ecosystems benefit simoultanously.

While we were fileting the fish, we opened their stomachs to discover and quantify what they ate. By doing this, we will help gather more information about the native species they are feeding on and in which ecosystems we might find them in the future.

And just like that our first week as volunteers is over, but at the same time, it is just beginning! We are very excited for the next weeks to come, and every day we look forward to getting a glimpse into life as a marine conservationist.

By Nina Baez.