Oceanic Black Manta

This is a black morph of Oceanic Manta Ray - Manta birostris, more affectionately called Black Manta. Unlike the regular Mantas, Black Mantas are rarer; they are all black in colour on their back and mostly black on the belly with white patches (instead of white belly with black patches).

This particular Black Oceanic Manta was a special encounter for me as I submitted the picture to Manta Trust of Maldives. They keep a database of Manta Rays sightings/observations and provides identifications to them as all Mantas have individual belly markings that are unique, similar to the fingerprints of humans. As this is the first observation of this particular individual, I was asked to give it a name, which I named it after myself - Keatsoon! :)