Studying Giant Manta Rays
- Alonso Rodriguez
- 15 hours ago
- 11 min read
By Alonso I. Rodríguez de la Parra, explorer and documentarian
"These projects can only be achieved with passion and dedication, and they are, without a doubt, projects I would like to take part in and contribute my grain of sand to." — Alonso I. Rodríguez de la Parra, explorer and documentarian
This chapter jumps between the distant past and the not-so-distant past; I had to change several parts because of things that happened. There will be parts that leave you in doubt, but everything will be resolved in time…
It's hard to develop an idea when you have conflicting feelings about the same subject or concept. Something that makes you deeply happy turns, from one moment to the next, into bad news, into something deeply sad. Sometimes that sadness should work as motivation, but on this occasion it isn't a motivation that feels good; it's a motivation that presents itself more as an obligation — and obligation isn't bad either, it's just sad. It's sad because the life of a person who, in my eyes, is the greatest warrior, now hangs on a thin line, between life and what comes after it. A warrior who has carried out immense work, and whose achievements we must now do everything possible to honor and whose aims we must complete. But before giving the battle up for lost, I invite you to pray. I'm not a religious person, but I believe our collective energy can do things that not even science could explain. There are times when, although my skepticism keeps me from believing in miracles, I wish with all my heart that they did exist. I hope these next lines serve as a kind of prayer, and that the time you take to read this might help a miracle happen, so that this warrior — whom I haven't yet named — may accompany and guide us for much longer. I knew her for only a short time, but her energy and her person passed on to me a whole lifetime of learning in very few moments.
It was last year, 2023, and I was meeting with my coworkers as we decided what to do for the Oceans Week celebration. This is a week in which, with good friends and colleagues, we make a tremendous effort to raise awareness throughout the Mexican Republic. Although it may seem like we cover a lot, the truth is there's still so much left to do, so many minds to reach, and so many people to convince to join this movement. During this period of planning and endless meetings and calls, I had the chance to travel quite a bit promoting my mission and vision — which are really the mission and vision I gave my company, "Mares de México." In the beginning, the motivation was to encourage people to take part in the collective effort to protect the seas of Mexico. And if you think this is an easy task, let me tell you it's quite the opposite. Sometimes I want to drop everything and go back to selling fruit, go back to making music with a band and returning to tour. What used to be fun tours, full of partying and late nights, are now tours along the coasts of Mexico to learn about the different marine conservation projects that exist around the country. When I started this, I thought collaboration would be simple, but as my research advanced, I realized how difficult it was. Many projects are tainted by traumas that make collaboration very hard — traumas that other companies have caused them by not being straight in what they say, using others' projects only for their own benefit. Truly, beginning to break that barrier was, and still is, very difficult. I believed that a few good photos and a couple of very good stories would be enough to start generating donations and get people to participate in wanting to save the ocean. It's not like that. We're all busy trying to save ourselves most of the time. But we don't realize that the only way to save ourselves is by saving others. I wrote a saying I pulled out of my sleeve on the door of my museum in Toluca. The saying goes like this: "The more you give, the more you will receive, and you'll help keep the flow of abundance in balance." What do I mean by this? In my logic, the more you give, the more you'll receive. It isn't always so, but if we all begin to give enough, there will be enough to give in the future. So this, mixed with everyone's collaboration and a little patience, will make the world hold much more, so that we need much less and there is much more to give.
This museum in Toluca is what allows me to carry out many of the adventures and crazy ideas I have. Ideas that don't yet pay me back, but that have allowed me to give a great deal to different marine conservation projects. And when I don't have money, there's something I can give that no one but myself can take from me: I can give my time to go film, collaborate, or take part in these marine conservation projects. I'll tell you more later about the vision of this museum and project, which to my mind is in a small first stage. But with your participation we could achieve those longed-for "miracles" and do our part to save the oceans — and, as a result, ourselves.
The planning of the Oceans Week event was a complete success. We managed to generate quite a large movement, to meet people with incredible projects, a thousand times more productive and intelligent than mine. People I deeply admire, people who with their time work wonders and achieve things that not even all the money in the world could accomplish. These projects can only be achieved with passion and dedication, and they are, without a doubt, projects I would like to take part in and contribute my grain of sand to.
On these tours that felt endless, I made very good friendships, friendships I truly admire. Among them, I met a young man named Esteban Salazar, a biologist and explorer who had just moved to La Paz. It was a very strange thing, because he was the one who wrote to me on Instagram saying he really liked my photos, and seeing that I was in La Paz, he said he'd invite me for a beer at the famous Harker. By twists of fate, I was completely alone and without any plans, so I agreed to meet him and have that beer. When I arrived, I could tell he was very excited to meet me, something I found very strange, since I don't consider myself any kind of celebrity and don't even think I have enough followers to be considered famous. As I began talking with him, I was left astonished by what he told me. Esteban is a marine biologist with a great deal of vision about where he wants to take his projects, wonderful ideas regarding species protection and the study of areas with greater density and movement of certain groups of species in particular spaces. Using their movements in georeferenced ways, Esteban managed to create an analytical model to predict the behavior or the zones where various species can be found. This is a double-edged sword in the wrong hands, but I have no doubt that Esteban is more than just a genius — he is a being full of kindness and genuine intelligence. There is still so much to do with Esteban, but in this story I'm telling you, it was he who introduced me to Lena, a Portuguese girl who, although she has a personality a little hard to understand, is very pleasant and noble, and what she does, she does with enormous dedication and heart.
Different landscapes — Alonso I. Rodríguez de la Parra
Lena is a marine biologist of extraordinary abilities. Meeting people like her and Esteban is, without a doubt, like meeting the stars of the bands I most loved when I devoted myself to making music. In part, I still couldn't believe my work was allowing me to meet people like them. My childhood dream was to be a veterinarian or a biologist, and for not-very-important reasons, I took other paths and ended up studying music and a business degree in the entertainment industry — something that seemed to pull me away from my childhood dreams. But I didn't intend to live my life without listening to that child I carry inside, so I chose to do everything possible to get closer to that world and to contribute through the things I know how to do, which I'm still discovering, if I'm honest.
From the conversations I heard between Esteban and Lena, I realized there were certain tools that could make their work much more precise and efficient. And with this in mind — and a lot of momentum on my side because of the museum, the talks at various events, and my own Oceans Week event — I was able to obtain many small donations and money from the museum itself to buy a couple of satellite tags: tools that allow Lena and Esteban to expand the indicators they needed in order to obtain more information about the species and the routes they are taking.
I handed these satellite tags to Lena. She is conducting a hugely important study of a species I love: the giant oceanic manta ray. To me, Lena is like a superhero. She is estimating the population of giant mantas in Revillagigedo, gathering data to get to know this species even better and to keep filling those empty spaces of unanswered questions we have about it. The news of the satellite tags was very well received by Lena, and I felt immensely proud to be able to support her project and Esteban's in any way I could. After this, Lena invited me to film her work and to board a ship bound for the Revillagigedo Archipelago to place these tags.
On hearing this news, I did everything possible to embark on this adventure, to accompany Lena to document her work and hope that the resulting video would bear fruit so we could keep collaborating and participating. In my rationality, I still hadn't grasped that I was collaborating with the most important researchers and institutions in the world when it comes to science and research. That's something I think I still haven't finished processing. The truth is, I never like to celebrate "victories," because rather than taking it as a victory, I still feel it's only one step on the long road I have to travel. And if I stop to celebrate, I'd be wasting valuable time. I don't like to get complacent, and I don't want a false sense of victory to make me ease my pace, because the truth is that our planet and the species that inhabit it remain at an extremely fatal risk — yes, fatal.
On the ship, I got to meet extraordinary people, even more extraordinary than Esteban and Lena combined. People I'm sure both Lena and Esteban also admire and look upon with the same feeling I have toward Esteban or Lena. Obviously, when I found out who we were with, I felt even smaller, and that filled me with motivation and the desire to ask questions, though I also didn't want to seem like a fan. I tried to fulfill my role and work in the most professional way, always trying to help and contribute something, however minuscule.
Lena is a mermaid underwater, and I don't say it for her physical beauty, though she is very pretty, but for how she operates and works when she's diving. She knows exactly what to do, how to approach the animals cautiously, always presenting herself to them and letting them observe her, so that when she understands she can approach, she does. I don't quite understand how she does it, but it's as if she has a connection with the magnificent giant mantas. The protocols she follows to carry out the satellite tagging are anything but simple; they involve a great deal of delicacy, skill, and knowledge. It's not something just anyone can do. During this expedition, we were able to successfully place 7 satellite tags and document the process of how they were placed. And although it was difficult, and at one point we thought it wouldn't be achieved, the ending was successful and very rewarding. With this material, we'll now be able to learn more about this species. The truth is that, although we think we know a lot, the more we learn, the more we realize new questions are born.
Of two of the seven satellite tags we placed, I had the honor of choosing the names for these animals. One of the giant mantas we named Simon, in honor of the founder of the Marine Megafauna Foundation, who was with us on that expedition and who, with great humility despite his vast career, treated me as an equal, as a friend and collaborator. What I learned most from him wasn't science or biology, but that a great person is always noble, that a person with great power is always kind and gentle. Truly, Simon is an example to follow.
The second giant manta we tagged, we named Sofía. Giving her this name is a gift to the love of my life, who is named Sofía, and whom — although I was far away and working — I never stopped thinking about. Now I can tell her that there is a giant manta that bears her name, that this animal represents the fragility of the ecosystem, but above all the hope that, with this information, an entire species can be saved — a species facing a 95% drop in its numbers. Yes, 95% of the species no longer exists. Most of its relatives have already vanished from this planet.
And now I return a little to the beginning. Mentioning this feels very hard, but on this trip, Lena introduced me to Andrea Marshall, the co-founder of the Marine Megafauna Foundation. Andrea is a person who, when you see her, seems a little serious, but when you start talking with her, you realize her kindness, her passion, and above all the great knowledge and empathy she has when communicating her work and the subjects she studies. She is the Queen of Giant Oceanic Mantas. She is one of the pioneers in studying this species and has produced and captured invaluable insights about it, data that has helped enormously to learn more about the population and life of these animals. She took a photograph of me that will stay with me forever, a photograph in which I'm swimming beneath a manta while I try to document its magnificent swim and take a photo to identify it — the very photo of the manta I named Sofía, which I was able to send to my girlfriend as a gift.
Sadly, a week after that trip ended, we received very bad news. Lena wrote to me and told me that Andrea was in a coma due to an aneurysm. It's a very serious problem; I know because my grandfather died of it. This news completely changes the perspective of this whole account, because although this trip filled me with happiness and hope, this news utterly breaks my heart. After this trip, my admiration for her and all the participants is incomparable. I can't stop thinking about how a person with such an important mission can, from one second to the next, be in such a delicate situation. Her work and dedication have changed the world of research and what we know about this species. In my mind, I can only promise that, when she wakes, I will keep supporting these projects and doing everything possible to contribute my grain of sand. And I'm sure that both Lena and Esteban will remain steadfast in their mission and will carry all these efforts toward generating the actions needed for this beautiful species to flourish again in numbers and not be in danger of disappearing.
This text is dedicated to Andrea Marshall, to her passion and her struggle, which will not be in vain, and whose mission becomes ours. Please offer your prayers so that Andrea may gain strength and give us many more years of research and teaching.
"There are projects that can only be achieved with passion and dedication, and they are, without a doubt, projects I would like to take part in and contribute my grain of sand to."
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