Swimming with Manta Rays: Where, When, and How to Do It Responsibly

Manta rays are among the most reliable ocean giants to swim with: a 2013 global survey counted 190 manta dive sites in 23 countries, and the best known include southern Mozambique, Indonesia’s Nusa Penida, Komodo, and Raja Ampat, the Maldives, Hawaii, Mexico, and Ecuador. Mantas are harmless to people, and the research on keeping encounters harmless for the mantas is consistent: stay at least 3 meters (10 feet) away, approach from the side, and stay calm and still.

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.

Where are the best places to swim with manta rays?

The best places are aggregation sites, where mantas gather predictably to feed or to be cleaned, and a small number of countries hold most of them. In 2013, ten countries accounted for almost 93% of global manta dive revenue: Japan, Indonesia, the Maldives, Mozambique, Thailand, Australia, Mexico, the United States, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau.

Most of those encounters are with the reef manta ray (Mobula alfredi). Divers meet reef mantas far more often than oceanic mantas, because reef mantas live in shallow coastal water near many established dive destinations and habitually return to the same cleaning stations. The larger oceanic manta ray (Mobula birostris) is seen reliably at only a handful of sites, mostly offshore islands and seamounts. The sites below are those where MMF works or the published science is strongest; the species pages cover the full range.

Mozambique

Southern Mozambique’s Inhambane coast is where MMF’s manta research began, and its reefs are cleaning stations used by both reef and oceanic mantas. Our acoustic tracking showed that reef mantas visit these stations mainly in daylight, with 89% of detections during the day and a peak between 09:00 and 14:00, which coincides directly with the main scuba diving hours. At the Red Sands cleaning station in Závora Bay, we have identified 583 individual reef mantas, with sightings peaking from July to November each year. Sightings at nearby Praia do Tofo, however, have fallen steeply over two decades, most likely because of fishing (see the threats chapter). Mozambique gave manta and devil rays legal protection in January 2021, and divers’ photographs now feed the long-term catalogs that will show whether that protection is working.

Indonesia

Indonesia ranked second in the world for manta dive revenue in 2013, with an estimated US$10.7 million a year spent on manta dives and over US$15 million in direct economic impact. Three of its best-known manta sites are well studied, the first two by our Indonesia program:

• Nusa Penida, off Bali, has mantas year-round at two shallow sites 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) apart. Manta Bay is a feeding ground used mainly by males and juveniles, and may be a nursery; Manta Point is a cleaning and courtship station used mainly by adults, and courtship coincides with the annual peak in sightings in May.
• Komodo National Park has four main manta sites used by tour operators, Cauldron, Karang Makassar, Mawan, and Manta Alley, where we identified 1,085 individual mantas from photographs taken between 2013 and 2018. Karang Makassar and Mawan are only about 5 kilometers (3 miles) apart, yet each has its own regulars.
• Raja Ampat, in West Papua, holds both species. Its dive season runs from September to June, because monsoon winds stop most trips in July and August; that is the window when tourism, and therefore most survey data, is possible, rather than a measured peak in manta numbers. Our Raja Ampat expeditions run in March and April, within that season.

The Maldives

The Maldives holds the world’s largest known reef manta population, with country-wide catalogs of more than 4,000 identified individuals. The mantas follow the monsoon: during the northeast monsoon, from December to March, they use reefs on the west side of the atolls, and during the southwest monsoon, from April to November, the east side. Hanifaru Bay in Baa Atoll is the largest known reef manta aggregation site, where lunar tides draw dense swarms of zooplankton into the bay, and mantas there were more likely to be present around new and full moons, just after high tide. The Maldives protected all rays in 2014, and its Environmental Protection Agency manages Hanifaru as a protected area where, as of 2019, scuba diving was prohibited and numbers were limited to 80 snorkelers and five boats at a time.

Hawaii

Hawaii’s reef mantas are among the most visited in the world, largely because of the night dives off the Kona coast. At these sites, lights attract the plankton that the mantas then feed on, a technique that concentrates mantas for divers (see tourism impacts on sharks and rays). Hawaii is also one of the places where reef mantas have local legal protection. Oceanic mantas occur around the islands too, but are seen only sporadically, which is why our Hawaii Oceanic Manta Project is compiling sightings to build the first picture of the species there.

Mexico and Ecuador

The eastern Pacific offers the best chance of meeting oceanic mantas. In Mexico’s Revillagigedo Archipelago, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) off Baja California Sur, encounters at cleaning stations are frequent and expected, and the archipelago became Revillagigedo National Park in 2017, the largest marine protected area in North America. Liveaboard trips run mainly in winter and spring, because operators avoid the summer and fall hurricane season. On the mainland coast, oceanic manta sightings in Bahía de Banderas peak around April. In the Mexican Caribbean, the mantas around Isla Contoy, which peak from July to September alongside whale sharks, belong to the genetic lineage since described as the Atlantic manta ray.

Off mainland Ecuador, oceanic mantas aggregate at cleaning stations around Isla de la Plata, less than 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the edge of the continental shelf. A study we co-authored identified 2,803 individual mantas there and at nearby Bajo Copé over 14 years, the largest known population of the species. Machalilla National Park authorities manage the encounters, and in 2016 they were reported to permit three vessels carrying up to eight divers each at Isla de la Plata.

Australia

Australia has two of the best-studied reef manta sites. At Coral Bay in the Ningaloo Marine Park, snorkel tours run year-round, with feeding aggregations of up to 70 mantas from March to May and courtship from June to November. At Lady Elliot Island, on the southern Great Barrier Reef, reef mantas are sighted year-round, and mark-recapture models estimated that roughly 450 individuals used the site over a single winter season, the period when the aggregation forms.

When is the best time to see manta rays?

The best time depends on the site, because most manta aggregations are seasonal and follow the plankton, but two rules apply almost everywhere: cleaning stations are busiest in daylight, and feeding events track tides, moon phase, and wind. The table summarizes the seasons the research supports.

Within a season, timing matters too. At a Philippine seamount, the cleaner wrasses worked only between sunrise and sunset, and mantas came to be cleaned when plankton was scarce and stayed away when it was thick. Maldivian mantas likewise appear to use cleaning stations when conditions are poor for feeding, so cleaning stations tend to be most reliable on days without a plankton bloom. Feeding aggregations, by contrast, form when wind and tide concentrate zooplankton, which is why guides at sites such as Hanifaru watch the tide tables and the moon. More on what mantas eat, and when, is in the feeding chapter.

Is it safe to swim with manta rays?

Yes. Manta rays filter zooplankton, have no venomous barb, and do not bite people (see the anatomy chapter and our manta ray facts). They are large animals, though, and close-quarters crowding is uncomfortable for both sides: at Ningaloo, operators reported occasional incidents of mantas ramming, fin-slapping, or breaching onto swimmers who were very close, and those reports helped prompt the local code of conduct.

The real risk runs the other way: boats, fishing line, and crowded encounters harm mantas far more often than mantas trouble people.

What is it like to swim with a manta ray?

Most encounters fall into one of three types: scuba dives at cleaning stations, snorkels with feeding mantas at the surface, and night dives where lights draw plankton and the mantas that feed on it. At a cleaning station, mantas hover over a coral head while small wrasses pick parasites and dead skin from their bodies and gills, while divers wait nearby. Cleaning stations are also where most courtship happens, with 90% of recorded courtship in the Maldives taking place at cleaning stations, so a patient diver may see the “train” of males following a female (see the reproduction chapter).

Snorkeling with feeding mantas is a different experience. The rays swim open-mouthed through the plankton, sometimes looping in tight somersaults (the feeding chapter explains why), and the water can be thick with them at peak sites. Oceanic manta encounters, at places such as Revillagigedo, tend to happen in open blue water, with mantas moving through the water column well off the bottom.

Mantas are also curious. In Raja Ampat, a study co-authored by MMF scientists found that some individuals regularly approached divers, curling the tips of their cephalic fins in much the way they do when meeting other mantas. The best encounters are the ones the manta chooses: Queensland’s guidance, for example, asks divers to stay calm and still and let the manta control the interaction.

How should you behave around manta rays?

Keep at least 3 meters (10 feet) away, approach from the side, stay passive, and never chase, touch, or dive down in front of a manta. These rules come from the Manta Trust’s code of conduct, which a 2020 study tested against 401 filmed interactions between snorkelers and feeding reef mantas in the Maldives:

1. Keep 3 meters (10 feet) or more away. Within 3 meters, mantas showed avoidance behavior in 31% of interactions; at 4 to 5 meters (13 to 16 feet), that fell to 3.4%.
2. Approach from the side. Mantas cannot see directly above or behind them, approaches from the front were significantly more disturbing, and approaches from above were the most likely to stop a manta feeding.
3. Stay passive. Chasing, accidental obstruction, and diving too close all made mantas significantly more likely to stop feeding; quiet, passive observation caused the least disturbance.
4. Don’t dive down in front of a manta for a photo. In 35% of interactions, snorkelers deliberately dived close to mantas, often to film themselves. The study recommends that only experienced freedivers dive near mantas at all.
5. At cleaning stations, stay low, still, and off the reef. Poor buoyancy can damage the coral and disturb the cleaner fish that make the station work, and divers’ bubbles and crowding may keep mantas from reaching the station.
6. Boats slow down. The Ningaloo code, for example, caps boat speed at 8 knots within 100 meters (330 feet) and 5 knots within 30 meters (100 feet) of a manta, keeps vessels 15 meters (50 feet) away, and bars diving below the surface within 30 meters of known cleaning stations.

Knowing the rules is not the same as following them. In the Maldives study, swimmers kept 3 meters or more from mantas in only 44% of interactions, even though many had been briefed. The authors point to evidence that guides who intervene in the water, with groups small enough to supervise, change behavior more effectively than briefings alone.

Does tourism disturb manta rays?

Yes, in the short term: studies at sites in four countries have recorded mantas changing course, avoiding swimmers, or stopping feeding during tourism encounters. Whether those short-term responses add up to long-term harm to a population has not yet been measured, so researchers recommend managing tourism as if they might, a precautionary approach.

At Ningaloo, our study found that mantas responded to 34.1% of encounters with swim groups and 15.5% of encounters with tour boats, with responses ranging from sudden turns to abandoning feeding or leaving a cleaning station. In the Maldives, mantas showed some avoidance in 36.7% of observed interactions. In Mexico, oceanic mantas were more likely to switch to evasive behavior when divers actively chased them, and the effect was strongest in busy Bahía de Banderas. Maldivian mantas reacted more strongly at a quiet site than at crowded Hanifaru, possibly because Hanifaru’s mantas are more used to people.

Crowding is the pressure that grows fastest. In Komodo National Park, we recorded 34% more dive boats per survey at Karang Makassar and Mawan between 2014 and 2017. At Nusa Penida, which received an estimated 200,000 tourists a year by 2015, we warned that tourism pressure at the Manta Bay feeding ground might disrupt foraging and slow the growth of young mantas. Along the Mozambique coast, peak cleaning-station hours coincide directly with scuba dives, so we recommended limits on diver and vessel numbers, mandatory interaction protocols, and possibly spatial or seasonal closures.

Boats also cause injuries. Oceanic mantas in Bahía de Banderas, an area of heavy vessel traffic and small-scale fishing, carried injuries at 31.7%, against 5.2% at remote Revillagigedo, many of them from vessel collisions and fishing gear. In the Maldives, human-caused injuries were most common in the atolls with the most boat traffic, fishing, and tourism. Tourism impacts on wildlife are described as cumulative rather than catastrophic, and because mantas have one of the lowest population growth rates of any shark or ray, small costs repeated over years can matter.

Why doesn’t MMF promote swimming with manta rays in Florida?

Because the manta rays off southeast Florida are a small population of juveniles using a nursery, and our research shows that divers disturb them. MMF’s Florida Manta Project found that every male and 96% of the females identified were immature, in water averaging just 2.7 meters (9 feet) deep along a highly developed coastline, and that 27% already carried fishing-line entanglement injuries.

A 2025 drone study led by Miguel de Jesús Gómez-García and co-authored by MMF’s Jessica Pate then measured how these young Atlantic manta rays respond to divers. The mantas spent 37% of their time avoiding divers when divers were present, some individuals up to 70%, and held their cephalic fins unfurled for longer. The authors concluded that tourism could harm this small, vulnerable population, making it unsuitable for development. The Atlantic manta ray has no IUCN Red List assessment yet, and almost nothing is known about its life history, so caution is the sensible default. If you live in Florida, you can help by reporting sightings to the project or by choosing to adopt a Florida manta ray.

How much is manta ray tourism worth?

A great deal more than mantas are worth dead. The first global estimate, in 2013, put direct revenue from manta dives and snorkels at over US$73 million a year, and direct economic impact, including associated travel spending, at US$140 million, from more than a million manta dives across 23 countries.

The comparison with fishing is stark. The same study set that US$140 million against an estimated US$5 million a year for the global trade in manta gill plates, and found that Indonesia’s manta fisheries earned less than 3% of what the country’s manta tourism generated. Applying a lifetime-value calculation to the roughly 100 reef mantas of Yap gave about US$1.9 million per manta, while a whole manta sold for around US$41 at a Sri Lankan fish market. The authors note that per-animal figures like these are simplistic, but they are easy for policymakers to grasp.

Local studies tell the same story. Our 2016 study of manta tourism in Mozambique’s Inhambane Province, built on 478 tourist expenditure surveys, estimated US$10.9 million a year in direct revenue to dive operators and US$34.0 million in direct economic impact, with US$16.1 million to US$25.7 million a year lost to the region without manta tourism.

Does manta tourism help protect manta rays?

It can. Tourism value gives governments an economic reason to protect mantas and can pay for management on the water, but it does not stop fishing on its own. Indonesia’s national protection for manta rays came largely in response to the growth of its manta tourism industry, and Komodo National Park banned manta fishing in 2013, a year before the nationwide ban in 2014. At Nusa Penida, MMF’s Janis Argeswara and colleagues found that the reef manta population grew from about 170 to about 450 animals over a decade under that protection.

Some of the best examples come from management of the encounters themselves. In Raja Ampat, the regency’s Tourism Department and its Marine Protected Area Management Authority launched a Manta Task Force in 2016, after the Manta Sandy cleaning station had at times hosted up to nine boats and 50 divers at once. The task force built a ranger station at the site and trained young people from nearby villages to limit diver numbers and enforce the code of conduct, and later added boat speed limits in manta nursery areas. Operators reported general satisfaction with the rules and more mantas at the station, although the effects have not been formally measured. Every visitor to the Raja Ampat marine parks pays an environmental services fee, which finances the community ranger patrols that enforce the marine park network. In Komodo, the national park authority has set limits on boat numbers at Karang Makassar, its busiest manta site, and our Indonesia program now works with park management on enforcement and codes of conduct.

Southern Mozambique shows the limits of value alone. Manta tourism there was worth tens of millions of dollars a year, and the tourists and businesses we surveyed strongly supported marine protected areas, yet Tofo’s mantas still declined steeply, most likely because of fishing. Mozambique’s protection of manta and devil rays from 2021 was the necessary next step; enforcement and site protection are what will make it work. The Red List assessments make the same point: manta tourism should be legislated, continuously monitored, and enforced through permits.

How do you choose a responsible manta ray operator?

Choose an operator that briefs you before you enter the water, puts a guide in the water who enforces the code, keeps groups small, and keeps its boats and divers off the cleaning stations. In practice, look for an operator that:

• Briefs and supervises. In-water guides who step in when needed are more effective than briefings alone.
• Keeps groups small. Ningaloo’s code recommends that no more than seven swimmers plus two guides interact with a manta at once, and never more than ten swimmers plus two guides.
• Drives slowly and waits its turn. No speeding near mantas, no cutting across their path, and, as the Ningaloo code requires, one boat at a time near a manta.
• Respects the station. Divers stay low, still, and back from the cleaning coral; nobody kneels on the reef or blocks the mantas’ approach.
• Follows local rules and pays park fees. Permits, site limits, and visitor fees are how marine parks manage encounters and pay for patrols.
• Shares photos with researchers. Operators that contribute identification photos are helping to count and track the animals you came to see.

Can your manta photos help research?

Yes. Every manta has a unique pattern of spots on its belly, so a clear photograph of the underside can identify an individual for life. An automated pattern-matching method, described in a study co-authored by MMF, powers MantaMatcher.org, a global database where divers can upload their identification shots.

The contribution is large. At Nusa Penida, photographs logged by citizen scientists and trained observers identified 624 reef mantas from 5,913 sightings, and in Raja Ampat 75.4% of oceanic manta identification photos came from tourists. The best shot shows the whole belly, with the date and location noted. A photo is never worth breaking the 3-meter rule, though, and the movements chapter shows what these catalogs have revealed. If you photograph an oceanic manta in Hawaii, our Hawaii Oceanic Manta Project would like to hear from you.

How you can help

Swimming with manta rays well is simple: choose a responsible operator, keep your distance, let the manta set the terms, and share your photos with researchers.

If you would like to see mantas with the scientists who study them, MMF’s expeditions visit some of the best manta sites in Indonesia, including Komodo in May and June 2027 and Raja Ampat in March and April 2028, and 100% of the profit supports MMF’s research, education, and conservation work. You can also adopt a manta ray to support new research on manta rays.