7 November 2009 | NewScientist | 33

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Why did you decide to study manta rays?

I’ve been telling everyone since I was 5 years old

that I wanted to study sharks – all my work was to

that end. But when I finished my degree, I went to

Mozambique on vacation and stumbled upon the

largest population of manta rays in the world. No

one knows much about manta rays, so I saw this

amazing opportunity to study them. Since then

I’ve fallen in love with them.

What’s so great about these fish?

They behave differently to other fish. They

engage you as a diver, approach you, interact

with you – it’s a pleasure to work with them.

While in Mozambique you discovered a new

species of manta ray. How did that happen?

When I first came here I didn’t know anything

about manta rays, but I saw what I thought were

two different species. I was laughed at and told I

was wrong. So I gathered enough information –

morphological, behavioural, genetic – to prove

that there really are two species. I named it

Manta alfredi after Alfred Whitley, who provided

the first detailed scientific description of manta

rays in 1936.

Manta ray “beauty parlours” have also been a

focus of your research. How are they special?

Cleaning stations are pretty well known in the

marine environment, but for manta rays it’s an

extraordinary event. Because they are so large,

“cleaner fish” partition up the ray and clean

different parts of the animal. It looks so

co-operative and gentlemanly. The mantas have

to eat 14 per cent of their body weight a week in

plankton, so any time taken out from feeding has

to be invested in something important. As they

can spend up to 8 hours having parasites removed

and shark bite marks cleaned, it must be

detrimental if they’re not groomed.

You have successfully tracked a manta ray

using a satellite tag. What did you find out?

The results suggest that they are oceanic

wanderers, moving huge distances – up to

One-minute with...

Andrea Marshall

1100 kilometres – and travelling across

international boundaries. This has implications

for their management and conservation.

What else have you discovered?

We now know that they can give birth to one live

pup every year, but usually they don’t. This makes

them less fecund than most other sharks and rays,

and that makes them extremely vulnerable.

Are manta rays under threat?

In the IUCN Red List assessment we did in 2006

we called them threatened, but the more we find

out about them the more we realise that in many

places they should be listed as vulnerable. The

threats go from minor – net entanglements, boat

strikes, habitat degradation, and inappropriate

ecotourism – to major threats. In some areas,

500 to 1000 rays are killed annually for their

gill rakers, which are used in Chinese medicinal

products. That’s completely unsustainable.

Interview by Sanjida O’Connell

The “queen of manta rays” discusses diving, beauty parlours and the discovery of a new species

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PROFILE

Andrea Marshall has set up a ray adoption

scheme at giantfish.org. Her work with the

giant manta ray in Mozambique will be featured

in an episode of BBC TV’s Natural World series,

titled Andrea: Queen of the Mantas, to be

shown in the UK on 11 November.

receives a tiny fraction of the tens of billions of dollars spent globally on developing military hardware. And most of that is public money.

Put bluntly, much publicly funded science is no longer being done in the public interest. Despite this, policy-makers are complacent and argue that any damaging effects of commercial influence are minor.

In contrast, many scientists are noticing the effects and becoming discomfited by them. Some are starting to speak out. For example, staff at the Open University in the UK are pushing for new ethical standards for business partnerships following the university’s involvement in a major military contract.

However, these campaigns are few and far between. There is a strong incentive for scientists not to make a fuss if their department receives industry funds. This is strengthened by contractual requirements for secrecy that often come with industry partnerships.

To defend independent science, reform is needed, from the level of government policy down to that of the research study. To this end, SGR is making recommendations. These include: the open publication of all funding arrangements between academia and business; ethical standards for business-university partnerships; proper handling of conflicts of interests by journals; more involvement of the public in setting research priorities; and a change in government policies which prioritise research with short-term commercial priorities above all else.

Scientists must now voice their concerns publicly in order that policy-makers hear them. They could do worse than follow the example set by campaigners at the Open University. ■

Stuart Parkinson and Chris Langley are

authors of the SGR report Science and

the Corporate Agenda , which can be

downloaded from sgr.org.uk