These Giant Manta Rays Just Want to Hang Out | Expedition Raw

We are at the Ravi Hio Island, 300 miles from shore off of Mexico, and we're putting Critter cams on giant mantas for the first time.

Mantas are so friendly that they just hang out with the divers, so we wouldn't get any interesting footage because we'd just, you know, get selfies of ourselves from the mantas' perspective.

So we actually had to institute a policy among our group that once there's a camera on the animal, we get out of the water so that it'll go do something interesting.

I personally think that mantas are one of, if not the most amazing animal in the ocean. They're incredibly graceful, very intelligent; they're coming and investigating you just as much as you're investigating them.

Every other big animal that lives in these open ocean habitats tends to migrate quite a lot, but for mantas, what we're finding is that they're pretty much staying put.

I hope that the intrinsic value of having mantas swimming around in our oceans is enough to convince the public to protect them. But there's also a really strong argument for protecting them for economic reasons.

I think that having animals like mantas contributes to the planet that we live on. I mean, this is what makes the oceans wild.

We're out here putting Critter cams on leopard seals. We saw for the first time on video ever an act of fpop parasitism.