CORAL Hawaii Field Manager Liz Foote sent me some amazing pics from Maui today that I must share. Seems a manta ray carcass got entangled in a mooring line out at Molokini in about 125 feet of water. Coincidentally, it was stuck in a Manta mooring! With this much tasty bait in the water, you can bet that the man in the gray suit would show up. Sure enough, Liz reports that several Tiger sharks were observed by divers throughout the day. The sequence of images--some stills and others screen captures from video--are courtesy of several divers (Liz, can you help me with credits?) Check out the distended belly on one of them. Mahalo to Andy Schwanke for sending me the high res images from video he took (and my respect for his having the composure to actually film this!)
In addition to Tigers, Liz reports that some gray reef sharks dropped by for a nibble as well as supposedly-vegetarian surgeonfish. How did a manta get entangled in the first place? Russell Sparks, Marine Ecologist and Education Specialist for the Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources, Maui Office, thinks that the sharks killed it and/or it died, and then it got tangled up as the sharks were feeding on it.
Wish I could have seen it myself!
3 comments:
Sure thing, Rick...the first images were taken by James Decker (visitor to Maui), and the video stills are by Erik Stein (Extended Horizons). Yeah, it was probably the most-photographed Tiger shark we've had here! Sad to see the manta being devoured like that, but amazing!
Aloha Rick,
My name is Andy Schwanke. I work for Mike Severns Diving in Maui, Hawaii. The names Liz sent you aren't correct. The three printed pictures are actually stills from Hi Def video that I took. I can send you another from the same video to prove it. Any questions, feel free to contact me at: eelbite@maui.net
aloha, andy...
sorry for mis-crediting...
shoot me a pic and i'll repost and attribute credits correctly...
rmacpherson at coral dot org
amazing images... how did you hold your camera steady?!
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