NOAA did not designate critical habitat under the ESA for giant manta rays due to a lack of available data to identify physical or biological features essential to their conservation within areas under U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) due to significant declines in abundance from overutilization in the Indo-Pacific and eastern Pacific portion of its range, exacerbated by a lack of effective management measures to control this threat and the species’ inherent vulnerability to depletion due to its slow growth, late maturation, and low reproductive output 11.Įffective conservation and management of highly mobile marine species requires an understanding of the environmental drivers of their spatio-temporal distribution. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under the U.S. In 2018, giant manta rays were listed as a threatened species (under the taxonomic designation of Manta birostris) by the U.S. Of the two manta species, only giant manta rays ( Mobula birostris) occur in the western North Atlantic Ocean 11. alfredi 9, and synonymizing the genus Manta with the genus Mobula 10.

The taxonomic history of the genus Manta is complex 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, with more recent studies supporting a split of the Manta genus into two species: M. Manta rays are filter-feeding rays in the family Mobulidae, characterized by a terminal mouth, diamond-shaped bodies with wing-like pectoral fins, and long cephalic fins 1. SDM predictions will allow resource managers to more effectively protect manta rays from fisheries bycatch, boat strikes, oil and gas activities, contaminants and pollutants, and other threats. In the Gulf of Mexico, the highest nearshore occurrence was predicted around the Mississippi River delta from April to June and again from October to November.

SDMs predicted highest nearshore occurrence off northeastern Florida during April, with the distribution extending northward along the shelf-edge as temperatures warm, leading to higher occurrences north of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina from June to October, and then south of Savannah, Georgia from November to March as temperatures cool.

Manta rays were most commonly detected at productive nearshore and shelf-edge upwelling zones at surface thermal frontal boundaries within a temperature range of approximately 20–30 ☌. We integrated decades of sightings and survey effort data from multiple sources in a comprehensive species distribution modeling (SDM) framework to evaluate the distribution of giant manta rays off the eastern United States, including the Gulf of Mexico. In 2018, the giant manta ray was listed as threatened under the U.S.

Giant manta ray predators