Identified individually by the pattern on its belly, which does not change over a lifetime.
To about 5 m across the disc, black above with two pale shoulder patches and white below with a pattern of dark blotches that is unique to the individual and stable for life — the basis of the photo-identification catalogues that most of what is known about their movements comes from. The oceanic manta Mobula birostris is larger, has a dark band across the mouth and different shoulder markings, and is a rarer visitor inshore.
It feeds on zooplankton, filtering with gill plates while looping through dense patches, and visits cleaning stations on reef tops where wrasses and butterflyfishes work over the gills and belly. A station is the reliable place to see one: the animal circles slowly and returns. Divers who stay low and off to the side of a station are tolerated; divers who swim at the animal end the encounter. In the six destinations covered here it is a Bali and Papua New Guinea animal rather than a muck-site one. Listed as vulnerable. Recorded from the surface to about 40 m.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.