Every individual has a story.
Each known manta gets a profile. Their belly pattern. Their first sighting. The quirks divers remember. Browse them like you're flipping through a friend's photo album.
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Mantas as a gateway to the ocean.
We are a Japan-led community of researchers, divers, and friends-of-the-ocean, building on fifty years of manta photo-identification across the Ryūkyū archipelago. The full platform arrives later in 2026. Until then — welcome.
↓ Scroll for the story so far.
01 · The Vision
A fifty-year story, picked up and carried forward.
Japan's relationship with manta rays runs deeper than most people know. The world's longest-running reef manta photo-identification record began in Okinawa in the 1970s — in dive logs and field notebooks kept by people who simply loved watching them.
Japan Manta Project picks up that thread and weaves it forward. We treat manta rays as a gateway to the ocean — a way for divers, fishers, researchers, and the curious to come into contact with everything else that depends on healthy reefs and open water. The science is rigorous. The doors are open.
"An underwater dance that is magical to witness."
— on courtship trains in Ishigaki, spring season
02 · Six Fieldwork Regions
Across the Ryūkyū archipelago.
Six fieldwork regions across approximately 160 islands. The story unfolds at each one. Tap a marker to learn what happens there.
03 · Why It Matters
Half a century of dive logs. One growing archive.
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years of photo-identification heritage
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islands across the Ryūkyū archipelago
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active fieldwork regions
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mobulid satellite-tagged in Japanese waters
Half a century of dive logs and field notebooks have made Japan one of the most under-told manta stories on Earth. We're changing that — building a living archive that pairs decades of community knowledge with new tools: satellite telemetry, genetic biopsies, citizen-science contributions, and a public platform anyone can read.
04 · What's Coming
Built for two audiences at once.
Rigorous enough for researchers. Welcoming enough for the diver who saw their first manta last weekend. Three things to look forward to when the full platform arrives later this year.
02 / Sighting community
See one. Add one. Help us see what no one team can see alone.
Spotted a manta on your dive? Log it with a photo. Watch it ripple through the data. Citizen science is how fifty years of records turn into the next fifty.
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The boat, the lab, and the islands.
Long-form journal entries from across the project. The science behind the photos, in our own words — and in two languages.
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05 · Coming Soon