Scubaism

Washington Post’s Rick Weiss finds the golden lining in the tragic life of the baby manta three weeks ago at the Okinawa Aquarium.

So you’re a pregnant manta ray, and you’re about to give birth to a baby with, oh, a six-foot wingspan. How on Earth will you manage that?

Now, for the first time, scientists can answer that question: You gently flap your glorious, 13-foot-wide wings to swim to the bottom. You rub your swollen belly on the ground for a while. Then you gain a little altitude and, with a forceful push, you eject your precious bundle as a rolled-up, burrito-like tube, which promptly unfurls to begin its new life as one of the strangest and least-understood marine animals on the planet.

But short as its life was, the newborn added some data points to the largely blank page of what is known about this largest species of ray.

Until now, for example, no one knew how long the gestation period is for mantas. In the Okinawa aquarium’s huge tank, where the mother was observed mating on June 8 last year, it was 374 days, or one year and nine days.

That long developmental period strengthens scientists’ fears that a combination of slow maturation to adulthood, infrequent pregnancies and long gestation means manta ray populations can only slowly replenish themselves. Although the creatures are found worldwide in tropical and temperate waters, can live for decades and are not considered endangered overall, populations have failed to recover in some areas that have been overfished or degraded environmentally.