Manta rays are beautiful and majestic animals that have a life-changing effect on people who meet them. I want to protect them so humans can experience their transformational power for generations to come! My goal is to inspire people so they take action to protect the mantas' ecosystem and oceans all around the world.
Have you met the mantas of Kona? (if so, I've got a favor to ask...)
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I don’t know about you, but I LOVE makeovers.
Seeing the before and after pictures of any project and the transformation that comes from it excites me tremendously. A makeover is pure motivation and inspiration, two of my favorite things.
Today I am very excited to share with you …[DRUMROLL PLEASE]… our newly designed website!!!!
We went live a few days ago, and I am happy to share our beautiful, plenty simplified, and kinda slick new “home”.
Find out more about each manta
One new re-design feature is focused on the one thing I love most about my work with the manta rays. I am sure you can imagine that when you swim with them (almost) every night, you get to know some of them well.
Not just what they look like and how big they are, but their behavior, their individualities, whether they mind swimming close to humans or staying away from busy places, etcetera.
We also notice when something happens to one of the mantas. When they get hurt (often by discarded fishing materials), they're pregnant, or something changes in their behavior. Occasionally they suddenly stay away, and we're left to wonder whether they'll ever return or something terrible happened to them.
We've been identifying and tracking the manta rays who come to the Big Island of Hawaii for over 20 years, and you may have seen our old "manta ray library" or looked into the manta ray statistics we published in the past.
The changes to our website allow us now not just to track the mantas but also to share the information more easily. What their markings are, who was the first person to identify them, where the name comes from, videos, pictures - you can now find them all in one place.
| Check out the new manta ray database! |
Granted, there's so much more information to add still, and we're going to take the following months to share more about "our" gentle giants in there.
I've got a favor to ask...
One awesome thing the new setup allows us to do is to collect stories from people around the world whose lives were touched by the mantas of Kona.
If you've ever been to Hawaii and you had the opportunity to swim with one of the manta rays in the library, would you mind visiting that manta ray's page and leaving a comment (scroll to the bottom of the page)?
Tell us when and where you met that particular manta, and maybe you remember something else that happened on that dive, or you wouldn't mind telling us what effect meeting the mantas had on you? We'd love to know!
I hope many of you will now become contributors to our new manta ray database - and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for making the effort!
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Aloha, Martina |
Martina Wing
Manta rays are beautiful and majestic animals that have a life-changing effect on people who meet them. I want to protect them so humans can experience their transformational power for generations to come! My goal is to inspire people so they take action to protect the mantas' ecosystem and oceans all around the world.
Aloha Reader, Today, I'd like to take a sidestep from writing about saving manta rays and ocean conservation... and ask you to join in a personal celebration. 1998- 25 years ago was the best and the worst year of my life. I had just lost my husband at a young age and was going through a deep grieving period. I started traveling with the destination Hawaii... and after my first dive with the manta rays, everything changed. The deep transformation that washed over me made me realize there was...
Aloha Reader, Q: Are manta rays mammals? A: No, they're not - they are most definitely fish. Q: Ah, so they lay eggs? A: Yes... but it's not what you think... This is one of the most frequently asked questions at our Manta Ray Moonlight Swim - and one I love to answer as it opens up a fun conversation about this magnificent fish. And then, there is this one word I usually avoid when talking about the mantas' reproduction, even though it’s an important part of what they are: “ovoviviparous”....
Aloha Reader, After the devastating wildfires in Maui and the destruction of Lahaina on 08/08, I needed a few days to regain my emotional balance. A smaller fire also occurred on the Mauna Kea Beach hotel's grounds, so all together, it hit very close to home. I've received many heartfelt messages from around the world, and I want to thank everyone who thought of us here in Hawaii. We are doing well. I'm not one for sending emails for the sake of sending emails, but the last couple of weeks...