Manta rays reproduce slowly. After a courtship in which several males chase a single female, fertilization is internal, and the female carries a single pup for about a year, nourishing it with a secreted “uterine milk” rather than a placenta. Most females then rest for at least a year, and across populations the average is one pup every four to five years.
This guide is written by the scientists of the Marine Megafauna Foundation, whose research described all three manta ray species and underpins their IUCN Red List assessments.
Almost everything known about manta reproduction comes from following recognizable individuals for years, because pregnant mantas are rarely caught. This chapter follows the life cycle from courtship to the nursery, and explains why its slow pace matters for conservation.
How do manta rays court each other?
Manta courtship is a chase: a female leads a line of males, known as a courtship train, through fast turns, flips, and somersaults that can continue for hours. The most detailed description comes from a 14-year study in the Maldives, which recorded 229 courtship events across more than 11,000 surveys and divided the process into seven stages: initiation, endurance, evasion, pre-copulatory positioning, copulation, post-copulatory holding, and separation. Reef and oceanic mantas appear to follow the same sequence.
Courtship often begins at a cleaning station, when a male swims up and positions himself directly above a female. Females frequently refuse, and in Mozambique a male’s attempt to settle over a female often caused her to rear up and buck him off. In the Maldives, only 16% of these initiations developed into a full courtship train. Trains ranged from a single male to 26 males behind one female, with an average of three males per female, rising to five once the female began actively trying to escape.
Our own early work off southern Mozambique described the same behavior in reef mantas, with up to 13 males pursuing a single female in a tight line. The same individuals were often seen on consecutive dives, which suggests that a single courtship can last more than two hours. Mature females at nearby cleaning stations neither joined in nor attracted the courting males, which suggests that a female may signal when she is ready to mate through her behavior or physiology.
That signal may be a scent. During one Maldives courtship, the pursued female released a clear fluid from her cloaca (the single opening shared by the reproductive, urinary, and digestive tracts), after which the males sped up to close behind her. Pursuing males also swim with their cephalic fins unrolled, and the authors suggest this may increase water flow over the nostrils and help them follow a chemical trail. The long chase itself may be a form of female choice, wearing out the competition until only the most persistent male remains, although that interpretation is still a hypothesis.
Courtship looks broadly similar across the whole manta and devil ray family. A 2025 global review co-authored by MMF and Manta Trust scientists compiled 87 new records of courtship and mating from eight of the ten described mobulid species in 18 countries and territories, found that they aligned with the seven-stage framework, and described male-to-male “pseudo-courtship” in four species. The anatomy chapter describes the cephalic fins.
How do manta rays mate?
Mating is brief and belly to belly: the male grips the tip of the female’s left pectoral fin in his mouth, swings underneath her, and inserts one of his two claspers for somewhere between 15 seconds and a minute and a half. Like all sharks and rays, mantas use internal fertilization, and the male’s claspers (modified extensions of his pelvic fins) transfer sperm into the female’s cloaca.
The first photographs of manta rays mating in the wild came from the Ogasawara Islands, Japan, in 1997, where snorkelers recorded a female of about 5 meters (16 feet) mating with two males of about 4 meters (13 feet), all identified at the time as giant (oceanic) mantas. The males chased the female for 20 to 30 minutes at around 10 kilometers per hour (6 miles per hour), and each mated with her within a meter (3 feet) of the surface, inserting a clasper for 90 and 60 seconds respectively before releasing her fin.
In Mozambique we witnessed five reef manta matings, all in water less than 40 meters (130 feet) deep. Clasper insertion lasted 15 to 35 seconds, and in four of the five events the male kept hold of the female’s fin for another 5 to 20 seconds afterward. The joined pair often sank slowly through the water. In the single copulation recorded during the Maldives study, the male slid his open mouth down the leading edge of her left fin before flipping underneath her, and the pair spiraled clockwise as they sank for about 30 seconds before separating with no post-copulatory hold.
The side matters. In Mozambique, 164 of 166 mating scars were on the female’s left pectoral fin, at the time the first consistent left-right preference reported in the behavior of any shark or ray. Males, in contrast, used their left and right claspers interchangeably, and more than two-thirds carried mating scars on both. The same left-sided pattern has since been recorded in reef mantas off eastern Australia and in oceanic mantas in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. Why mantas favor the left is still unknown.
Mating also explains a puzzle about manta teeth. Mantas filter plankton and do not bite their food, yet males retain bands of small teeth in the lower jaw, which may have been retained largely for gripping females during mating. The resulting wounds stay red for less than a week, but the scars often persist for years, so researchers use them to identify mature females.
When and where do manta rays breed?
At most well-studied sites, courtship is seasonal and concentrated at cleaning stations, which may function as display arenas where females can assess many males at once. In the Maldives, 90% of 229 courtship events took place at cleaning stations, leading the authors to suggest that these sites act as leks (gathering places where animals display and compete for mates). The ecology of cleaning stations is covered in the feeding chapter.
In southern Mozambique, courtship took place only between October and January, during the austral summer, with 73% of fresh mating wounds recorded in November and December. Mating was clustered into bursts of a few days rather than spread through the season, and breaching tracked it closely: 77% of breaches occurred between October and January, and in those months 91% happened within 48 hours of courtship, mating, or fresh mating wounds.
Timing varies from place to place. In Raja Ampat, courtship in the Dampier Strait peaks in January and February, often just after surface-feeding aggregations break up at the end of a falling tide, while in southeast Misool it is seen mostly from October to December for reef mantas and from February to May for oceanic mantas. At Lady Elliot Island on the Great Barrier Reef, most courtship was recorded between June and August. At Nusa Penida, Bali, our team found that Manta Point is used mainly for cleaning and courtship, with reproductive behavior peaking in May, and suggested limits on boat numbers and interactions there, especially during key reproductive periods.
Atlantic manta rays (Mobula yarae) gather off central Florida each spring, and between 2021 and 2024 MMF’s Jessica Pate documented 18 courtship events there, the first published courtship records for the species. Most (83%) involved just two animals, and breaching was seen on almost every day that courtship was recorded by boat. Courtship also extends deeper than divers can follow: camera tags on reef mantas in the Maldives recorded courtship trains as deep as 86 meters (282 feet), well beyond recreational diving limits. The tourism chapter covers how to behave around these sites.
Do manta rays lay eggs or give birth to live young?
Manta rays give birth to live young. They are aplacental viviparous, meaning the embryo develops inside the mother’s uterus without a placenta, feeding first on its yolk and then on a “uterine milk” rich in protein and lipids. A review co-authored by MMF scientists describes how this milk, technically called histotroph, is secreted by villi (finger-like projections) lining the uterus wall.
Ultrasound scans of two captive reef mantas at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan have shown how the pup develops. Yolk was still visible about 81 days after mating, alongside a thick layer of uterine villi, and the aquarium team divided pregnancy into three stages: an early stage (0 to 80 days after mating), a middle stage (80 to 150 days) in which the wing-like pectoral fins and cephalic fins become visible and the embryo begins buccal pumping, and a late stage (150 to 360 days) in which the fins fold over each other and large body movements, such as rotating in the uterus, were no longer seen. Late in pregnancy, though, the embryo’s head lay deeper than the scanner could image, so smaller movements may have gone unrecorded.
Buccal pumping is a rhythmic opening and closing of the mouth. In 2026 it was also recorded in a wild fetus, in an oceanic manta at Revillagigedo, Mexico, and the study’s authors interpret it as helping an unborn manta take in oxygen in the absence of a placenta. By the time it is born, a pup is folded tightly: the near-term reef manta fetus we described from Mozambique had its pectoral fins folded up over its back, teeth already in its lower jaw, and a fully formed belly spot pattern, which showed that the spots used for photo-identification develop before birth.
How long are manta rays pregnant?
About a year. In southern Mozambique, we followed two reef manta females through consecutive pregnancies and estimated gestation at about 12 months or slightly more. Across that study we recorded 69 pregnancies in 62 females. A pregnancy was usually visible from late April to July, by which point the female was likely at least six and a half months pregnant, and births took place during the austral summer.
Captive records agree closely. Six pregnancies at the Okinawa aquarium lasted 363 to 379 days, averaging 370.5, and births took place in May and June at water temperatures of about 27 °C (81 °F). That is far longer than in some of their stingray relatives, which carry their young for only two to four months.
Females can also mate again soon after giving birth. In the Maldives, 12% of the females seen in courtship were visibly near-term pregnant, and a captive female in Okinawa mated within hours of giving birth. In Mozambique, mating also appeared to follow closely after birth in the females we were able to track through consecutive pregnancies.
For oceanic mantas, gestation has never been measured directly. Fishery records, including the first oceanic manta fetus described from Peru, point to a single pup and a pregnancy of about a year, and the Red List assumes a reproductive cycle like the reef manta’s.
How many pups do manta rays have?
One pup per pregnancy is normal, and twins are rare. Every one of the seven captive births at Okinawa involved a single embryo. In Mozambique, however, three near-term females looked large enough to be carrying two pups, and a pregnant female killed by fishers was carrying two small embryos, so two pups are conceived on occasion.
Over a lifetime, the numbers stay small. The Red List assessments estimate that the average manta ray may produce only four to seven pups over its entire life. The lifespan chapter explains how that estimate is built.
How often do manta rays give birth?
Usually every two years or more, although the interval differs between populations and individuals, probably depending on how much food is available. In our first Mozambique study, reproduction was most commonly biennial: ten females took at least a year off between pregnancies and one took at least two. Yet five females were pregnant in consecutive years, and one was pregnant in three of four years, which shows that female reef mantas can ovulate every year. Two of the consecutive pregnancies ended in mid-term abortions that were attributed to shark attacks. Shark bites can cost males their breeding potential too: damage to the claspers was not uncommon in our Mozambique injury study, and the loss of both claspers would leave a male unable to reproduce.
Later work along the same coast found longer gaps. At Závora Bay, we recorded 44 pregnancies across 36 females over 11 years, and the five females seen pregnant more than once had an average postpartum interval, the gap between successive pregnancies, of 33.4 months, almost three years. In contrast, Raja Ampat has produced some of the shortest intervals recorded in the wild: of 217 females seen pregnant there, 16 were pregnant in consecutive years, and one was heavily pregnant in four consecutive years and five times in seven years. One captive female in Okinawa gave birth in six consecutive years, from 2007 to 2012, the last a stillborn pup.
The reef manta Red List assessment gives a reproductive cycle of one to seven years, with a central tendency of four to five years, varying with region and food availability. Several factors probably contribute, and our Mozambique study set out three. Producing a large pup is energetically costly, so females may need time to rebuild their reserves; a female who mates late in one season will give birth late the next, and so may miss that year’s mating period; and some matings fail, since several females seen with fresh mating wounds were not pregnant the following year. For oceanic mantas, the interval is unknown and the Red List assumes four to five years.
How big are baby manta rays?
Reef manta pups are born at about 1.3 to 1.5 meters (4 to 5 feet) across, and oceanic manta pups at roughly 1.2 to 2 meters (4 to 6.5 feet), according to their Red List assessments. Captive-born reef mantas at Okinawa were larger, at 153.5 to 192 centimeters (5 to 6.3 feet) and 31.5 to 70 kilograms (69 to 154 pounds).
The near-term fetus we described from Mozambique, taken from a female speared by fishers in 2005, measured 1.33 meters (4 feet 4 inches) and weighed 15.1 kilograms (33 pounds), heavier than any manta fetus previously documented. The smallest free-swimming mantas we recorded there were 1.5 to 1.67 meters (4.9 to 5.5 feet) across, with umbilical scars already closed, no visible parasites, and no shark bites. The size chapter puts these figures alongside adult sizes.
Pups are on their own from birth. Like other sharks and rays, mantas show no obvious parental care, and the newborns we saw in Mozambique were never accompanied by larger animals and were almost never resighted, which suggests that they either move elsewhere or suffer high mortality early in life. By the time young mantas reached 2 to 3 meters across, 79% carried shark-bite scars.
When do manta rays reach maturity?
Male reef mantas mature at about 2.7 to 3 meters (9 to 10 feet) across and females at 3 to 3.9 meters (10 to 13 feet), depending on the region, which takes females an estimated 8 to 17 years; oceanic mantas mature at larger sizes. In southern Mozambique, males begin the transition to maturity at about 2.8 meters and are mature at around 3 meters, while the smallest pregnant female measured about 3.9 meters. Females in Raja Ampat were pregnant at 3.0 to 3.6 meters, so size at maturity clearly differs between populations. The Red List assessment gives 270 to 300 centimeters for males and 300 to 350 centimeters for females.
A male’s maturity can be judged from his claspers. In our Mozambique study, mature males had claspers that were fully calcified, extended well beyond the pelvic fins, and carried scars from mating, while juveniles had small, soft claspers that did not reach the edge of the fins. Females are harder to assess: a female is confirmed as mature only once she is seen pregnant or with mating scars.
Age at maturity is far less certain than size, because mantas cannot yet be aged reliably. The reef manta Red List assessment estimates that females mature at 8 to 17 years old, depending on region and food availability. For oceanic mantas, males mature at 3.5 to 4 meters (11.5 to 13 feet) and females at 3.8 to 5 meters (12.5 to 16.5 feet), and a female’s first pregnancy may come up to four years after she matures, depending on food availability. For the Atlantic manta ray, size and age at maturity have not yet been published.
Where are manta ray nurseries?
Manta nurseries have been documented or proposed in Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, Indonesia, and Brazil, using a standard three-part test: more juveniles than elsewhere, juveniles that remain for weeks or months, and use of the same area year after year. Those criteria come from shark and ray research in general, as our Florida study sets out. Birthing grounds are harder to pin down. Our Mozambique study identified the southern coast as a birthing ground as well as a mating ground, because heavily pregnant females resighted a few days later had already given birth, but the exact places where mantas give birth, and direct observations of birth in the wild, remain poorly documented.
Our Florida Manta Project identified 59 individual mantas between 2016 and 2019 along the developed coast of Palm Beach County. All 31 males were sexually immature, as were 96% of females, and 42% of individuals were seen more than once, eight of them across multiple years; one juvenile male was sighted 23 times over 797 days. These young mantas used water averaging just 2.7 meters (9 feet) deep, and the study concluded that this coastline may serve as a nursery for what is now recognized as the Atlantic manta ray. Further offshore, 25 years of records at Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico showed that 95% of mantas were smaller than the size at which male oceanic mantas mature, suggesting that the sanctuary may also serve as a nursery for oceanic and Atlantic mantas.
In Indonesia, our team found that two sites about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) apart at Nusa Penida do different jobs. Immature males were the most frequently sighted group at Manta Bay, a feeding site, providing strong evidence that it forms part of a nursery habitat, whereas nearby Manta Point is dominated by mature females that come to be cleaned and to court. In Raja Ampat, four nursery areas have been identified, and all four lie inside marine protected areas. Apparent newborns of 1.5 to 1.6 meters were seen feeding in the Wayag lagoon, where a satellite-tagged young male remained for six and a half months, and the Fam archipelago produced 40 young-of-the-year and 29 older juveniles in about 27 square kilometers (10 square miles) of reef. Off Brazil, 69% of manta sightings at Fernando de Noronha were of small individuals and none of the identified mantas showed signs of maturity, which marks the archipelago as a potential nursery.
Nurseries matter because, in a species with late maturity, high adult survival, and very few young, juvenile survival is particularly important to whether a population persists. They also bring young mantas into contact with people: in Florida, 28% of encounters were within a kilometer of a fishing pier or inlet jetty, and the threats chapter covers what that proximity costs.
How do scientists study manta ray reproduction?
Mostly by following known individuals for years, combining photo-identification with records of mating scars, claspers, and pregnancy bulges, and increasingly with underwater ultrasound. Photo-identification, based on each manta’s unique belly spot pattern, lets researchers record the same female’s pregnancies, births, and fresh mating wounds season after season; that is how the Mozambique gestation and birth-interval estimates were made.
The weakness of this approach is that pregnancy can be hard to see. A 2026 study led by Dr. Madalena Cabral of Cuidando los Mares de México and co-authored by MMF’s Jessica Pate held a contactless ultrasound probe a few centimeters (about 2 inches) above free-swimming oceanic mantas at Revillagigedo National Park and confirmed pregnancy in three females, the first time this had been done for wild oceanic mantas. Two were late in pregnancy and visibly swollen, although even that was not always obvious on video. The third, carrying a fetus roughly 56 to 60 centimeters (22 to 24 inches) across, showed no outward sign at all, which means that counts of pregnant females made by eye probably underestimate how many are breeding.
The developmental stages worked out in the Okinawa aquarium give field teams a reference for staging a pregnancy from a single scan, and MMF is now applying underwater ultrasound to wild mantas through our Mozambique manta ray research. More accurate pregnancy rates feed directly into estimates of how fast a population can grow.
Why it matters for conservation
Slow reproduction is the main reason manta populations cannot absorb much fishing. When the maximum population growth rate of manta rays was calculated, it was one of the lowest of the 106 sharks and rays for which comparable figures exist, and it was most sensitive to the length of the reproductive cycle. A population that loses adults to fishing cannot readily compensate by breeding faster, so recovery can take decades; the threats chapter sets out what is driving the declines.
The same biology points to what works. Protecting the places where mantas court, give birth, and grow up shields the adults and juveniles a population depends on, which is why it matters that Raja Ampat’s four known nurseries lie within its marine protected area network, and why our Nusa Penida study suggested limits on boats during key reproductive periods. Since 5 March 2026, all manta and devil rays have been listed on CITES Appendix I, the convention’s highest level of protection from international commercial trade. More on each species is on the reef manta ray and oceanic manta ray pages and in our manta ray facts.
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