#project manta

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Small ‘cleaner’ fish remove dead, damaged skin and parasites from the bodies of reef manta rays.

Image credit: Asia Armstrong/Project Manta

[sitting-on-me-bum]

The world’s only known pink manta ray was first spotted at Lady Elliot Island in 2015.

Image credit: Amelia Armstrong/Project Manta

[sitting-on-me-bum]

The giant oceanic manta ray (Manta birostris), left, can be found across global oceans, whereas the smaller reef manta ray (Mobula alfredi) lives in the Indo-Pacific region.

Image credits: Guy Stevens/Project Manta; shutterstock

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Reef manta rays are still hunted for their meat and gill plates.

Image credit: Asia Armstrong/Project Manta

[indizombie]

Manta rays have this unique spot pattern on their belly. So each individual is born with this unique pattern, like a fingerprint, and that remains unchanged through time. When they're photographed with that belly pattern, we can use that photograph to track them over time. We can track their movements, growth rates, all kinds of things just through these photographs.

Asia Armstrong, research fellow with the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC). USC's Project Manta database has identified more than 1,500 individual manta rays off the east coast of Australia.

[glitchntwitch]

I had uploaded this one previously, but not to the Cuzican Aerospace channel. This gave me a chance to update the music and title card at the end.

[glitchntwitch]

The second Project Manta video I posted this weekend. This was more of a close-up of the craft.

[glitchntwitch]

This weekend I went back to my November archives and posted three videos from Project Manta, my first experimentation with anti-grav craft. This is the first of the tree.