Dr Elitza Germanov has just published a major paper on the manta rays of Komodo National Park, Indonesia – an iconic World Heritage Area, and now known to be one of the world's largest populations of reef manta rays. I caught up with her for a chat about that work, and what she's got planned next :)

Jessica Pate is the Founder of the Florida Manta Project. Her research work has shown that the eastern Florida coast is a hotspot for hundreds of giant manta rays.

Stella Diamant is the Founder of the Madagascar Whale Shark Project. Her research work has shown that Nosy Be, in northwest Madagascar, is a global hotspot for whale sharks.

I talked to MMF Co-Founder Dr. Andrea Marshall about her work researching rhino rays in Mozambique. She's been doing pioneering scientific work with these critically endangered, poorly-known, awesome-looking rays over the past couple of years – and breaks it all down for us here. 

I've talked to Dr. David Robinson previously about his recent research on leopard (zebra) sharks. Before David moved to Australia, he worked as a sea turtle rehabilitation expert at the Dubai Turtle Rehabilitation Project. I wanted to chat with him about that work, too!

Sofia Green is a core member of the Galapagos Whale Shark Project, and recently completed her MSc thesis on tracking whale sharks. I talked to her while she was back at home base in Quito, Ecuador, after another stint in the Galapagos Islands.

Nakia Cullain is the manager of the Závora Marine Lab, an MMF manta ray scientist, and has just started her PhD on manta ecology and research at Dalhousie University in Canada. I chatted to her from her base in Závora, Mozambique, where she has lived for the past six years.

Dr. Al Dove is the Vice-President of Research & Conservation at the Georgia Aquarium, and was the lead editor on our new book: ‘Whale Sharks: Biology, Ecology, and Conservation.’ I chatted to him about our favorite and most interesting new discoveries on whale sharks while compiling the book.

Dr. Elitza (Ellie) Germanov, a Senior Scientist at MMF, is a world expert on manta rays and ocean pollution. She started the Microplastics and Megafauna project in Indonesia as part of her PhD work, which studied the impact of the smallest plastics on the largest marine animals. Janis Argeswara joined the project as a Research Assistant in 2018 and is now leading a project on the reproductive ecology of manta rays. I talked to them from their research base on Nusa Lembongan, off Bali’s southeast coast.

MMF Principal Scientist Dr. Chris Rohner has been working on tracking marlin recently. This was the first time that MMF researchers have worked on these amazing, highly-migratory oceanic predators. Chris has now published two of the first scientific papers on black and striped marlin movements in the Indian Ocean, so I chatted with him to discuss the results.

Lukas Mueller grew up in a small inland coal-mining town in Germany, but developed a love of freediving as part of The Watermen Project, where he used his breath-hold skills to work with large predatory sharks. He is now a PhD candidate at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and a project leader within MMF, developing a bull shark research program in Mozambique. Lukas has recently been in the field for several weeks, so I talked to him while he was in home self-isolation back in Germany.

Dr. David P. Robinson, now the co-owner of Sundive Dive Centre in Byron Bay on the eastern coast of Australia, has been a friend of mine for years. David studied the whale sharks of the Arabian region for his PhD, but I wanted to talk to him about his new project, focused on leopard sharks, because they're wonderful.