4. Despite their large size, with wingspans stretching up to 12 feet (3.6 meters), as many as 200 mantas may pack a football field-sized bay during these feeding frenzies.
5. Within hours the plankton run out, the feast winds down, and the mantas plow the bay's sandy bottom with their cephalic fins to throw hidden prey back into the water column.
在几个小时内浮游生物的盛宴即将结束，而蝠鲼犁其头鳍于海湾的沙底中，等待下一批猎物的到来。
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6. These massive fish (the wingspans of Maldives mantas can reach 12 feet) are dynamic filter feeders, shoveling their shoe-box mouths through krill like threshers through wheat, inhaling prey.
7. Mantas, with their slow reproductive rate, are vulnerable to overfishing, so a robust tourist trade could give local communities an economic incentive to conserve the fish rather than kill them.
8. Cue Manta birostris. "Just after high tide you'll see a few manta rays turn up, " says Guy Stevens, a British marine biologist who's been researching the Maldives mantas for the past three years.
9. Cue Manta birostris. "Just after high tide you'll see a few manta rays turn up, " says Guy Stevens, a British marine biologist who's been researching the Maldives mantas for the past three years.
