tourism and manta rays part 4: manta cleaning ecology by dr. anne-marie kitchen wheeler project...
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Tourism and Manta raysPart 4: Manta cleaning ecology
By Dr. Anne-Marie Kitchen WheelerProject Founder
Manta Ecology Project
Manta Cleaning Ecology
Most cleaning stations are in obvious locations: next to a white sand channel, blocks in a lagoon, at a current convergence, in the lee of current.
The majority of cleaning stations are on the edges of the atolls, at ocean-facing reefs.
When the mantas are not present the cleaner fish will clean other fish, sharks etc. they do not exclusively clean manta rays.
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Manta Cleaning Ecology
Mantas clean around once a week but some visit cleaning stations daily and others only visit a couple of times a months (Kitchen-Wheeler and Edwards in review).
Mantas spend an average of 35 minutes being cleaned but observations have shown this can vary from a couple of minutes (disturbed?) to nearly 5 hours (Kitchen-Wheeler 2013).
Every cleaning station is different and the way the cleaning station is used also varies: time of day, strength of current, direction of current, number of mantas present, season etc. will all influence the presence of mantas.
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Frequency distribution of total time spent at cleaning station in a day by a sample of 193 mantas with times split into 5 minute classes. The mode was 20 minutes which was also the median time.
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Number of minutes at cleaning station
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Thank you for your attentioncontact details: amkw9@sky.com
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