These can be rolled up in a spiral for swimming or can be flared out to channel water into the large, forward-pointing, rectangular mouth when the animal is feeding.

[11] The color of the dorsal side is dark black to midnight blue with scattered whitish and greyish areas on top head.

While for the oceanic manta ray, the dorsal surface is deep dark and the two white areas are well marked without gradient effect.

[1] It can be observed in several often-visited regions such as Hawaii, Fiji, French Polynesia, Micronesia, Bali, Komodo, Maldives, Mozambique, Australia and the Philippines.

[1][14] Reef manta rays live in a more or less identical wide area with the possibility of short migration to follow the zooplankton.

They therefore have a relatively sedentary behavior with precise areas for cleaning and feeding still within close proximity of coasts, reefs or islands.

[1] The reef manta ray has a pelagic lifestyle and feeds by filtering sea water in order to catch zooplankton.

[21] Because of its large size and velocity in case of danger (24 km/h or 15 mph escape speed),[22] the reef manta ray has very few natural predators which can be fatal to it.

[23] The reef manta ray is considered to be vulnerable by the IUCN in its Red List of Threatened Species because their population decreased drastically over the last twenty years due to overfishing.

Whatever the type of fishing (artisanal, targeted or bycatch), the impact on a population which has a low fecundity rate, a long gestation period with mainly one pup at a time, and a late sexual maturity can only be seriously detrimental as the species cannot compensate for the losses over several decades.

[24] In recent years, fishing for manta rays has been significantly boosted by prices of their gill rakers on the market for traditional Chinese medicine.

Pseudo-medicinal virtues assigned to them without proven scientific basis and a clever marketing strategy generate significant demand.