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Season 4 – Episode 2

Everybody loves Manta Rays and they truly are one of the oceans most graceful, playful, fascinating and beautiful creatures, but there are plenty of other species of rays out there and we meet them almost every day.

Stingrays – black spotted, feather tailed or porcupined – various eaglerays, the ornate eagleray which was discovered in the Lhaviyani Atoll, even torpedo rays and guitarfish/sharks/rays are seen regularly in Maldives. Rays and sharks are related to each other and the guitarfish is the best example of their relationship. They are mix between a shark and a ray­ you can definitely tell as soon as you spot them­ but genetically they belong to the family of rays. Worldwide there are only 4 known species and we’re quite lucky with regular sightings of spotted shovelnose rays and bowmouth guitarfish.

Another quite exciting encounter just happened the other day on an Outreef in Noonu Atoll: a marbled torpedo ray, a relative of the electric ray, was swimming down the reef, into a hole without any visible second exit, but less than a second later it disappeared in a cloud of sand like it went up in smoke…