Reef manta ray

Photo: Luis P. B. · CC BY-NC

Reef mantas are resident at productive coastal passages throughout the Coral Triangle and use the same cleaning stations repeatedly, allowing individual identification from the unique spot pattern on their white underside. Halmahera's Manta Passage is one of the few sites in eastern Indonesia where reef and oceanic mantas co-occur on the same dive, likely drawn by the passage's exceptional plankton production. Their use of cleaning stations is so habitual that local dive guides have named individual mantas tracked over multiple seasons.