The fight against the clock to save the giant manta rays of Peru

Editor’s note: Call to Earth is a editorial series committed to reporting the environmental challenges facing our planet, as well as showing solutions to those challenges. The initiative Rolex Perpetual Planet has partnered with to raise awareness and education on key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action. Biologist Kerstin Forsberg is a Rolex Award laureate.

( Spanish) — Biologist Kerstin Forsberg, who has worked for nearly a decade to save giant manta rays, knows that the survival of these spectacular ocean creatures does not depend on her, but on the local populations of her native Peru. From social leaders, from fishermen, from children. That’s why she works to empower them.

“The planet ocean organization what he seeks is to preserve the sea, but through people; empowering people through research, environmental education and sustainable development,” Forsberg told Español, who since 2014 has been working to preserve giant manta rays and other species in Peruvian waters.

Giant manta rays, listed as globally endangered, have been victims of those who seek their meat and their gills, highly coveted. But they have also faced, and continue to face, another major threat, which is bycatch: fishermen cast their nets in search of other species and they get caught in the process. This is how Forsberg explains it: “We have seen that manta rays tend to be a lot on the surface, and that generates a greater interaction with the fishing nets, and they end up becoming entangled. That generates an impact for the manta, of course, which in the end ends dying. And in the end it also generates an impact for the artisanal fisherman.”

That’s why Ocean Planet, founded by Forsberg, is now helping fishermen using technology.

“We are equipping artisanal fishermen with cell phones so that they can not only report their fishing in real time, but also report sightings, and not only of giant manta rays, but also of other species of marine megafauna such as whale sharks, sea turtles, like birds, like marine mammals that you see a lot,” explains Forsberg. In this way, fishermen can alert their colleagues live where the specimens of these species are and prevent them from falling into their nets by mistake. In addition, these reports make it possible to generate maps of critical areas for the preservation of giant manta rays, one of the most iconic of the nearly 540 species of manta rays that inhabit oceans, freshwater bodies, and reefs. according to the figures handled by the WWF organization.

For the biologist, it is remarkable how artisanal fishermen are appropriating technology for their work. They, in turn, benefit from this extra care since manta rays, Antón Matallana told en Español, damage the nets they need to fish and whose repair is very expensive.

The mission: connect

Forsberg, originally from Peru, loves swimming with manta rays. “It transforms you. An encounter with a manta, an encounter with the ocean in general, transforms you,” she says of this spectacular species that reaches seven meters in length and swim up to 1,000 meters deep. For her, seeing a manta swimming is life, it is movement, it is hope.

However, that is not the focus of his work now. The focus of her work can be summed up in one word: connect.

“My role is to connect. What I seek is to connect. Connect the artist with the student, connect the scientist or the one who is generating technology with the fisherman, connect the authorities with the young people who are generating change… Generate that space to connect,” he explains. Through these connections he works with local leaders who he believes are the key to sustainable change. Through them, he points out, communities can be empowered and generate a multiplying effect of good deeds.

The ocean, support of our life

Kerstin Forsberg says that meeting a manta ray in the ocean is an experience that transforms you. (Credit: Spanish)

The oceans, as explained by the program UN Environment, power the systems that make Earth habitable. They affect the climate, much of our food and even the oxygen we need to breathe. The entire planet depends on its conservation.

“It is the source of life on this planet. (…). None of us could be alive if an ocean did not exist. The ocean is the support of our life. And yet we know very little about it,” he reflects on it. the conservationist. Therefore, she concludes, we must all do our part for her city. “We are all part of this Ocean Planet.”