The Offended Manta
OMG — she got smacked in the head by a manta! No doubt about it. It looked intentional.
Black-and-white giants, graceful and impressive — mantas fire up our imagination with their fairy tale-like appearance and mysterious behavior. But sometimes… they can be downright rude. Especially when we start it.
Manta Paradise
You’ve probably heard or read that the Maldives are famous for their mantas. These elegant black-and-white gliders are incredibly popular, especially the reef manta which can grow up to 5 meters wide.
I absolutely love them. Not just for their size or beauty — though that helps — but mostly because you can dance with them underwater. Not a salsa or tango, more like synchronized swimming. I believe it’s a social thing for these majestic creatures, a way to communicate, bond, and maintain relationships.
If you see mantas often like I do, you start to recognize patterns in their behavior. Greeting rituals, shower time (a.k.a. cleaning sessions), feeding habits… And sometimes they throw in a surprise. Occasionally, it’s aimed at us.
Underwater Car Wash
In the Ari Atoll, there are lots of manta cleaning stations — places where cleaner fish hang out to groom other fish. These little guys remove dead skin and parasites from their “clients,” and every sea creature, mantas included, lines up for their turn like we queue for the car wash.
These cleaner fish work from the same stations every day, and the manta regulars drop by often. Of course, a creature as big as a manta needs a serious team of cleaners to get the job done right. If you want to see one, just hang around one of those stations — works like a charm.
We do that often on our Maldives trips, like last February with Mel and Peter. We’d just finished a dive near Mahibadhoo, on the western side of the atoll, and were back on our boat. After some fresh-baked chocolate cookies and a chilled pineapple smoothie, I headed for a refreshing shower.
It had been a great dive — a few mantas showed up at the cleaning station. The visibility wasn’t amazing, but we still had plenty of quality manta time.
Smacked by a Manta
While I’m chilling upstairs, thinking about the dive, Mel comes charging over, excited: “Blah blah manta… blah blah smack… blah blah GoPro… wanna see it?”
Huh? What is she on about?
It takes me a moment to catch up — I’m still half in the water mentally. But then she shows me the video. And OMG — she got smacked in the head by a manta! No doubt about it. It looked intentional. She was fine, luckily — not hurt, just a bit stunned. But wow, that manta packed a punch!
We must have rewatched the video a hundred times that week. And the story didn’t end there…
“Go Take a Hike!”
A few months later, I was on a trip with a group of photographers. The boat was chartered by two pros running photo workshops, and they’d invited a guest speaker — marine biologist Dr. Simon Pierce, a whale shark expert.
During his talk, he explained how getting too close to a whale shark is disrespectful. The animal will usually show its displeasure by turning its back to you and swimming away. Basically, the shark’s way of saying: “Go take a hike!”
That made me think of the manta video. After the workshop, I showed Simon the clip of Mel and Peter.
Peter had his camera on Mel, floating behind her. A big manta is on Mel’s left. She’s totally geeking out and turns to Peter to share her excitement. She does this twice — and then, the third time she turns… WHAM. The manta smacks her right on the head. Totally on purpose.
Simon cracked up just like I did.
We both figured it out — the manta was correcting her. Mel had told him “go take a hike” twice with her body language (the same way whale sharks interpret it), and the manta wasn’t having it. He knew he hadn’t done anything wrong and wasn’t about to let that slide.
Simon grinned in agreement. Case closed.
