Scientist Identifies New Manta Ray Species: Dr. Andrea Marshall’s Discovery of the Atlantic Manta

0:00 Ladies and gentlemen, I have a special announcement to make, actually two special announcements to make. One is personal to me. I'm gonna say that after. But the first thing is that there has been a new discovery, a new species of manta ray, the Atlantic Manta Ray that has been announced and discovered. It is by a dear friend of the podcast as well as the Beyond Jaws podcast, Dr. Andrea Marshall and her Marine Megafauna Foundation. I'm gonna go through the story, but I'm very excited to be announcing this. This is a huge news in the science world, in the SMA brank world, the shark ray, and kymera species world. Because it's a new species. There's only been two before. Now there's a third. We're gonna get into it. The other thing I wanted to announce very quickly, this is episode 1801.

0:40 So that's 1,801 episodes. I was gonna make the announcement last time, but I was really into the episode. I want to do this. It's such a good news episode. I decided to like, you know what, we got two great new things that are happening today. So this is, again, going into the 18 hundreds for me, which is huge as a podcaster, as well as talking about the new discovery of a new manta ray the Atlantic Manta Ray that is coming, from the Marine Mega Foundation and Dr. Andrea Marshall and her crew, loving this day. Let's start the show. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action.

1:23 If you wanna take action before we get into all this wonderful good news, I got good news for you. If you wanna take action, you can help be guided to take better action for the ocean by joining the undertow. It's an online community of ocean lovers, ocean scientists, ocean conservationists. There's gonna be wave makers that are there. People who independently are putting through projects just like mine, like this podcast as well as other wave makers out there that are going around the world and giving you stories and giving you information to help you better protect the ocean. There's gonna be vetted, products that you could buy. There's gonna be ocean connection trips that you can make. And there's just gonna be just discussions on a regular basis about the ocean. No algorithms straight up discussion. Ocean news, it's gonna be awesome.

2:04 Go to speak up for blue.com/join the undertow. Let's get to it. This is a great story. So I want to go through this story because it's something that I feel is really great and it starts off with Andrea Marshall. Andrea Marshall was no stranger to manta rays. She has spent years underwater studying their graceful movement. In 2009, she made history by proving that there wasn't just one manta ray species, but two. The moment shook the marine biology world. But even then, a mystery lingered in the back of her mind while diving the Atlantic off the Yucatan Peninsula, she saw something that didn't quite fit. These mantas looked familiar, but something was different.

2:45 Their shoulder markings weren't shaped like a T, but like a sharp V. Their coloration was lighter and their spots on their bellies didn't stretch the way they should. She trusted her instinct. This wasn't just a local variation. It could be something entirely new. She began documenting everything, photographs, samples, observations. Every time she saw one, her conviction grew stronger, but science doesn't run on instinct alone. Years passed and still the evidence remains circumstantial. She reached out to collaborators across the Atlantic and the Caribbean. They too had seen these odd rays, but no one had the full picture. The mystery deepen the weight of proof sat heavy.

3:25 Meanwhile, her conservation work expanded globally. And then in 2024, tragedy struck. Andrea suffered a sudden brain aneurysm. Her world turned upside down. Research pause, communication slowed, but her colleagues didn't stop. Jessica Pate and Nayara Bucair picked up the baton. They gathered the data Andrea had compiled over the years. They ran the genetics compared body structure map sightings, and finally the results were in. This was not a variation, it was a distinct species. They named it Mobula Yarae after the mythic Brazilian water spirit, a name that reflected both mystery and reverence.

4:07 Andrea awoke to the news from her recovery. The third manta ray species was real. A 15 year journey through dives, doubts, and dreams finally had its answer. And she had been right all along. Now the ocean had a new story to tell. A story of resilience of the ocean and of the people who study it, of how science sometimes requires stubbornness, faith, and decades of quiet work. The Atlantic Manta Ray was no longer a ghost species. It had a name, place, and a future, and Dr. Andrea Marshall had once again rewritten what we thought we knew about the sea, not by accident, but by listening closely to the ocean and to the science and never letting go.

4:52 This was a special announcement that was made. You know, Andrea had an interview done on the Beyond Jaws podcast was the first time I got to meet her with my co-host Dr. David Ebert, who has known Andrea for years and years and years. In 2024 when we got News of the Aneurysm, you know, it was devastating to hear. She is such an amazing scientist. And to have this announcement come out, as she's recovering from that aneurysm and being able to see and understand that this has a profound effect on how we study and monitor, manta rays and the importance of how important science is to this world, There's so many things that we can do now in monitoring these different species and protecting them because it's not just a global population.

5:36 It's a type of animal that has distinct species throughout each different ocean. And I think it's gonna be really important to see how this monitoring, how this management, and also how many other species are out there that we just don't know about. And it's gonna take people who are in the water, like Andrea, like other staff at Marine Mega Foundation and other partners, that they have to be able to say, Hey, you know what? We know a lot more about the species than we did before. it costs money. There's a lot of funding that's involved. There's a lot of people that's involved. There's a lot of time that's involved to study these animals. And a lot of the times in the shark world, if you watch the Beyond Jaws Podcast it just takes a number of individuals to go out and study these.

6:16 And sometimes it's often a low amount of individuals, just a small amount of individuals that go out and that study these animals and that discover new species, new populations just all over the world. Not just manta rays, but other shark species and other species that are living in the ocean. Whether it be fish, whether it be vertebrates, invertebrates, it doesn't matter. There are people out there that are in the ocean time and after time, after time making observations, discovering these species. Sometimes it's in partnership with non-scientists. Sometimes it's in partnership with local communities. Oftentimes it's in partnerships with local communities, in areas around the world that as scientists, we don't really know very well, but we partner with these local like communities who are like, yeah, we've seen the species.

6:56 These are the markings that we normally see. How are they different from others? And we have that communication go around. The science gets put into one place. We put out a paper to say, Hey, you know what? This is a new species, or it's not a new species, or it's just like a hybrid. it's really, really great. There's actually a really great episode on Shark Bytes, which I will link in the show notes that you can see about hybrid great whites and what that means in terms of where they're traveling and the distinct lineages, not species, but lineages of these great whites. All over the world and how they're mixing and where they're going and how they got there. It's a really, really great piece. really great video and I'm gonna link to it below. But this is what people are going out and looking at. This is why science needs to be funded.

7:38 And if we don't fund this science, we're not gonna make these discoveries. We're not gonna understand the oceans better. And you never know what these species and the habitats that they use and how they'll help us in the future understand our planet better, protect us better, and maybe live in more harmony. So that's the episode for today. I hope you enjoyed it. I will link to the Marine Mega Foundation article on this third species, but also, if you are interested in supporting them, you can do that. There's a button called Support us. Highly recommend that you go do that, to allow them to do more of this type of stuff. There are other manta ray foundations that are out there that are doing great work as well. The Manta Trust is one of them. I'll link to that one as well. It's very important that we support these organizations in discovering more about marine megafauna than we've ever had.

8:24 It's really, really important that we do that, to understand biodiversity, to understand why we need to protect these species, and just understand the species in general. So thank you so much for listening to this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the good news. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin from the True Nor Strong and Free. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.