Below is a video capturing the image of a giant creature swimming near the bay of Trinidad, a country located to the south of the Caribbean Sea, 11 km offshore from the coast of Venezuela.
Another creature swimming alongside it is believed to be a shark. This has left many people astonished by the enormous size of this creature. Indeed, it is one of the largest beings in the ocean.
The giant ocean ray, a shark is nothing compared to it!
What is this creature?
The creature mentioned above is a giant ocean ray, also known as the manta ray (Scientific name: Mobula birostris) – the largest species of ray in the family Mobulidae and the largest ray species in the world.
This species is primarily distributed in tropical and subtropical waters, and occasionally appears in temperate seas. The giant ocean ray has the characteristic flat body of rays but reaches impressive sizes, with lengths up to 9 meters and weighing around 3 tons!
Giant Ray. (Photo: DataMares)
The average length of a ray is about 4.5 meters; like many large ocean creatures, the giant ray primarily feeds on plankton, and much of its information remains a mystery as this species lives in the deep ocean.
According to a 2016 study titled “Giant rays shown to be predators of the deep” on Phys.org, 73% of their diet consists of mesopelagic organisms (creatures living in the middle layer of the deep ocean).
The giant ocean ray also has one of the largest brain sizes, weighing up to 200 grams (compared to the human brain, which weighs about 1.3 grams and is 5 to 10 times the weight of a whale shark’s brain).
The giant ocean ray also has the largest brain-to-body weight ratio compared to any other fish species (this ratio reflects the intelligence of animal species). This is why giant ocean rays are considered one of the most intelligent creatures in the ocean.
The gill plate of the ray has medicinal value in Traditional Chinese Medicine. (Photo: Pinterest)
One interesting fact about this massive creature is that it will die if it stops swimming or in other words, it must swim continuously throughout its life. The reason is that swimming helps it absorb oxygen to breathe.
Despite its size, the giant ray is a gentle and harmless creature to humans. Giant ocean rays are even curious and approach divers. The International Union for Conservation of Nature, abbreviated as IUCN, lists them as one of the 16,000 species that are threatened.
The primary threat to this creature comes from humans. The hunting of rays for their gill plates (the part that helps rays filter food from small plankton) for medicinal purposes has severely reduced their population.
