Manta Rays, Coral Conservation and Macro Life in the Mergui Archipelago
Anuar joining the boat with his volunteers
Thanda presenting her manta protection project to our guests
We also had the support this week of Anuar Abdullah, a Malaysian marine biologist and founder of Ocean Quest Global. Anuar has started a coral nursery in the Mergui Archipelago and gave us an interesting introduction to his award-winning techniques for protecting, regrowing and replanting coral.
What a great project! It was such an interesting trip, and we all learnt a lot about the techniques and dedication of these two brilliant people working to protect our blue planet.
The clean-up team removing pieces of coral and live creatures, mostly crabs, from a recovered ghost net
If you want to help Anuar and Thanda with their missions, check out their websites and don’t hesitate to share pictures of any manta rays you spot during your dives through Manta Matcher. Your sightings can help researchers study manta ray movements and may even allow you to receive updates about the individual manta you photographed.
Oceanic Manta Rays and Amazing Marine Life
Seal-face pufferfish
We were incredibly lucky to have some great encounters with oceanic manta rays during three dives on our first day. We identified four individual mantas, making the encounters even more special.
Even though the wind was tough on us and the conditions were quite wavy, the underwater world of the Mergui Archipelago still delivered an amazing variety of creatures. We spotted seahorses, pipefish, frogfish, Pikachu nudibranchs, large Jenkins’ stingrays and mating cuttlefish.
And to make the trip even more memorable, we encountered the second whale shark of the season!
One of the manta rays we spotted around South Twin, identified as a new member of the Myanmar manta database
Macro Treasures of Myanmar
Thecacera nudibranch, also known as the Pikachu nudibranch
Baby tiger-tail seahorse
Giant frogfish
Thanks to Thierry Lagrave for sharing his pictures with us this week while our in-house photographer was away!
And big congratulations to Nell, Yasmin and Lili for becoming Nitrox divers!
We had a great time together, and we hope to meet you all again soon!
The Smiling Seahorse team
