Gentle Giants

They move with such grace and ease, through water so incredibly clear, that they seem to be soaring in deep space.

And when you plunge into the realm of the giant Pacific manta, if you’ve come on a good day, one will arrive as your escort and take you on a cosmic journey that will leave you spellbound.

The feeling is as magical as it is mysterious; your mind is cleared of clutter and filled instead with wonder.

These magnificent creatures, with winglike fins that can span more than 20 feet, are among the world’s largest species of fish, yet also among the most gentle and certainly among the most sociable.

Seafarers of old referred to them as devilfish, because of fins on the sides of their heads resembling horns. Divers refer to them as some of the ocean’s most valuable treasures.

It’s a sunny, breezy morning at La Reina, a tiny islet 37 miles from La Paz, in Baja California’s Sea of Cortez, just north of Cerralvo Island. At least five large mantas can be seen coursing through the depths like magic carpets, seemingly eager to greet dozens of scuba divers who have come to experience a phenomenon that has been occurring on and off for the last three months.

Before long, Rocio Lozano, a La Paz dive master with 10 years experience in local waters, is interacting with an especially large manta. It is propelling itself slowly against the gentle current. She is proceeding along at the same speed, immediately beneath the manta, facing upward and sending streams of bubbles bouncing off its belly.

The manta seems to appreciate the sensation; it keeps coming back for more.

And therein lies the problem with diving with these passive giants: You eventually run out of air and have to return to the surface.

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There are only a few places in the world where you can predictably dive with giant Pacific mantas. Yap Island in Micronesia has them almost year-round. At a few resorts in Hawaii, they are drawn in at night by lights that attract the plankton on which they feed. At the remote Revillagigedo Islands, 260 miles south of Baja California’s tip, divers encounter mantas fairly regularly and some claim to have developed close bonds with them.

They swim into the Sea of Cortez seasonally, usually in the summer months but sometimes in the spring and fall, to take advantage of plankton blooms. Little is known about their migration habits or their populations, and nobody is sure where they come from or why they gather at La Reina.

One theory is that they treat La Reina as a cleaning station, as they do “the Boiler” at the Revillagigedos’ San Benedicto Island, having parasites removed by small “cleaner” fishes. There has been some visible evidence of this, but not much.

Another theory is that they’re feeding on the eggs of grouper, snapper and other large species at La Reina’s vast network of reefs, where there has been considerable evidence of spawning, but not enough to support the appetites of creatures so large. Giant mantas can weigh nearly 3,000 pounds.

Whatever the reasons, the mantas have come and at least seven large individuals remain at La Reina, according to Baja Quest ( https://www.bajaquest.com.mx ), the dive center owned by Lozano.

And very few customers, she says, go home disappointed.

“What’s nice about mantas is that they behave like no other fish,” Lozano says, between dives. “I can only relate them to marine mammals like sea lions or whales because they actually look at you, identify and make contact with you.

“You can touch them, although you really shouldn’t, and they will shiver with excitement. And of course they like the bubbles. They’ll feel sensations that other fish just don’t feel.”

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One sensation a manta would rather not feel is that of a harpoon ripping through its flesh. Another would be struggling for hours, to no avail, in the nets of fishermen.

As such congenial creatures, the giant Pacific mantas that venture into the Sea of Cortez are highly vulnerable, and are occasionally caught incidentally and sometimes even targeted by local fishermen.

The diving community wants federal protection for giant mantas and the even larger and equally docile whale sharks, arguing that they’re valuable as tourist attractions.

But because there is so little scientific data regarding catch rates, movements and populations of not only giant Pacific mantas but smaller rays and sharks, the push for protection has been slow to gain momentum.

Still, the cries of conservationists have not fallen entirely on deaf ears and legislation is pending that, it is hoped, will better regulate commercial fishing practices.

Meanwhile, fishermen at some of the remote encampments dotting Baja’s shores seem to be going about their business without much concern for what shows in their nets, or at the end of their harpoons.

Not far from La Reina, just south of Cerralvo Island at Punta Arenas, the commercial fishermen share the beach with visiting sportfishermen, who come to board skiffs, or pangas , to go offshore and target game fish such as tuna, dorado and billfish.

Recently, the sportfishermen have been returning in time to witness the killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands of mobulas, smaller relatives of giant mantas that are sometimes mistaken for giant mantas. There are at least five species of mobulas that utilize the Sea of Cortez. Some reach spans of about 10 feet but the ones commonly seen leaping free of the water average four to six feet.

Mobulas are not especially diver friendly and tend to travel in much larger groups than giant Pacific mantas. Thus, they are not as valuable from a tourism standpoint, but they are nonetheless considered members of the ecosystem and, as members of the shark family, slow to reproduce and highly vulnerable to overfishing.

“Whatever they are, mobulas or mantas, that much wanton destruction is just terrible,” said James “Doc Ski” Labanowski, after returning home to Port Hueneme from a recent fishing trip to Las Arenas Resort. “I’m not a tree hugger or anything like that, but when I see such wholesale slaughter, it’s just ... sickening.”

Labanowski, and Rocky and Vicki Markham of Oxnard said they returned to the beach to find about 150 mobulas spread out across the wet sand, their captors methodically slicing flesh from their fins.

As Labanowski walked around taking pictures, he said, Vicki Markham was sickened to tears. The three of them expressed no desire to return to the area anytime soon.

“We couldn’t believe what we saw,” Labanowski said.

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It’s a blazing mid-morning at the fish camp at Las Arenas. Most of the commercial fishermen have returned to their homes in nearby communities.

Mario Geraldo Lucero is still hard at work, though, filleting a bucketful of triggerfish. The carcasses of several large mobulas, minus their flesh, wash around in the gentle surf. An army of pelicans lines the shore, hoping for scraps.

Lucero, 49, says he makes nine pesos a kilo, or about 50 cents a pound, for the flesh of triggerfish, which is sold to markets and restaurants in La Paz. It’s not nearly as much as he gets for the more desirable sea bass or snapper, but there’s a lot of competition in camp and those species are not always available.

Asked about the mobulas, Lucero explains that the season for them is winding down but they’re still around in good enough numbers to be harvested.

He says without reservation that fishermen--there are about 200 operating in the area--can team up and catch as many as 40 a day.

A single mobula can yield up to 25 pounds of stringy meat that sells for slightly less than triggerfish.

Asked if the fishermen ever go after giant Pacific mantas, Lucero, proceeding methodically with his work, shakes his head as if to say no, and explains that the mantas are too big, too powerful and basically not worth the trouble.

“They sometimes get trapped in our nets, but not very often,” he says. “But their meat sells for about the same, nine pesos per kilo.”

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The second dive with Lozano--Baja Quest offers, among other excursions, two-tank day trips to La Reina for $115 a person--is even more pleasant than the first.

After a brief visit with the mantas, she begins a circumnavigation of the islet, to show that one of her favorite dive spots has more to offer than the flying carpets everyone is so fascinated with.

La Reina, from above the surface a minuscule land mass with a lighthouse to warn mariners of its presence, is indeed a beautiful place when experienced from below.

The voyage takes you past the sea lions that haul out on the islet’s shores, down and through steep canyons featuring sheer walls and abrupt overhangs, over reefs teeming with colorful fish and through which slither various species of eel, including the popular green morays.

The world there is a beautiful blue, with clarity to afford nearly unobstructed visibility for about 60 feet.

So wonderful are your surroundings that you have forgotten all about the mantas--until you glance skyward and discover that they’ve been with you all along, winging silently through your bubbles.s