Kāne'ohe Bay has a variety of habitats. Proceeding
outward from shore, there are:
- shallow rubble areas with coral along their outer edges (seen as lighter
areas with brown perimeters running roughly parallel to shore)
- deeper waters dotted with raised coral reef areas
called patch reefs (seen as the main dark blue swath spotted with
lighter oval-shaped reefs)
- the shallow sandbar with varied coral cover
that gradually slopes into the open ocean (seen as the continuous white and
cyan area with large, darker coral-covered areas)
Plankton are not uniformly distributed within the bay, and
mantas are likely to be sighted wherever plankton are most abundant. The
map below shows the locations that mantas have been sighted with blue points, and a
heat map indicating the most popular areas. Click on a point so see information
about that sighting, including the time, number of mantas observed together, and a
photo.
Within the study area manta sightings are tightly
clustered along the inner ledge of the
sandbar, particularly near coral-covered sections and patch reefs
just off ledge. Very few mantas are
observed in the deeper waters or near patch reefs farther from the sandbar.
This leads us to
believe that plankton are concentrated along this ledge when mantas are
sighted feeding there, though we
need to examine tide data to understand why this may be the case.
