Mobula (Devil) Ray

Habitat: Open coastal waters and offshore banks; surface schools by day, with tagged animals making extreme deep dives at night

Distribuição: Warm oceans worldwide; the great schooling spectacles are in Mexico's Sea of Cortez, with sicklefin devil ray aggregations at the Azores' seamounts and scattered schools through the tropics

Comportamento: The manta's smaller, more restless cousins: horned cephalic fins, swept wings, and a taste for aggregation. Munk's devil rays off Baja form schools of thousands that ripple the surface, and their habit of launching into flips and belly-flops meters above the water remains only partly explained. Encounters are mostly snorkel drifts alongside moving schools.

Dieta: Zooplankton and small schooling fish strained from the water in coordinated feeding runs

Tamanho: normalmente cerca de 1.1 m; documentado até 3.7 m (disc width; spans the genus: schooling Munk's devil rays average about a meter, while sicklefin devil rays exceed 3 m).

Slip into the water quietly ahead of a school's path rather than dropping onto it, no chasing or free-dive bombing through the formation, and follow local swim-with rules. Encounters are snorkel-only with most operators.

Every Mobula species assessed is threatened (mostly Vulnerable or Endangered) from gill-plate fisheries and purse-seine bycatch; all are on CITES Appendix II.