Manta rays are among the ocean's most charismatic megafauna, but their slow reproduction and wide-ranging movements make them highly vulnerable to bycatch, pollution, and the growing pressures of unregulated wildlife tourism.
Manta rays face welfare threats across their entire range. Targeted fishing for gill rakers — a trade driven by unsubstantiated medicinal claims — causes death through capture trauma and suffocation. Bycatch in non-targeted fisheries kills rays that cannot surface to breathe when entangled in nets. Ghost fishing gear entanglement causes chronic injury, swimming impairment, and slow death. Tourism, while economically beneficial for conservation, causes welfare harm when poorly managed: boats approaching feeding aggregations, swimmers touching rays, or flash photography disrupting nocturnal behaviour all impose stress on individual animals. Well-designed tourism with strict approach distances, no-touch rules, and limited group sizes can generate conservation revenue with minimal welfare impact. Protecting the planktonic prey of manta rays requires addressing broader ocean health, making manta welfare inseparable from ocean ecosystem conservation.