Tourism and Manta rays Part 4: Manta cleaning ecology By Dr. Anne-Marie Kitchen Wheeler Project 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. 2

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. 3

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. 4

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