First photographic records of the giant manta ray Manta birostris off eastern Australia
1
School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia
2
Climate Adaptation Flagship, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Dutton Park, QLD, Australia
3
Marine Megafauna Foundation, Manta Ray & Whale Shark Research Centre, Tofo Beach, Inhambane, Mozambique
4
School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biodiversity, Ecology, Marine Biology, Taxonomy
- Keywords
- Mobulidae, manta ray, Australia, citizen science
- Copyright
- © 2014 Couturier et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2014. First photographic records of the giant manta ray Manta birostris off eastern Australia. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e572v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.572v1
Abstract
We present the first photographic evidence of the presence of the giant manta ray Manta birostris in east Australian waters. Two individuals were photographed off Montague Island in New South Wales and off the north east coast of Tasmania, during summer 2012 and 2014, respectively. These sightings confirm previous unverified reports on the species occurrence and extending the range of M. birostris to 40ºS. We discuss these findings in the context of the species’ migratory ecology, the regional oceanography along the south eastern Australian coastline and local productivity events.