At first, the fishers were not very welcoming,” remembers Muhammad G Salim, who goes by Egin. Egin is a young conservationist who leads the Mobula Project Indonesia, an all-Indonesian shark and ray conservation team working with 70 local fishers to protect threatened species including manta rays and devil rays. “Being a fisher is a culture for them, so they didn’t know about conservation,” he explains. That’s why they had reservations when some young researchers from the project first approached them. But rather than just telling them to stop fishing, the Mobula Project Indonesia wanted to collaborate with the fishing communities. That, says Egin, is the best way to have a positive impact.

“We share the same dreams with the fishers,” he explains. When asked about their hopes, most of the fishers want the ocean to be full of fish, just how they remember it to be like 10 or 20 years ago, so their children and grandchildren can continue in the family trade. Although for different reasons, the feeling is the same for conservationists. They, too, want a thriving ocean with healthy fish populations. This shared mindset is key, Egin says: “We have the same idea for the ocean as the fishers and that’s our way to approach them.”

Egin has been passionate about protecting mobulid rays, a term that encompasses manta and devil rays, since his undergraduate degree with the University of IPB in Java, Indonesia. During this time, he took part in numerous conservation projects and studied all aspects of manta and devil rays, from their biology and ecology to their interactions with fisheries and impact on the local economy. The traditional fishing village of Muncar in Banyuwangi in Indonesia’s Bali Strait is a unique location where both large-scale and small-scale fisheries overlap with as many as 600 small-scale fishing boats. The region’s productive waters are home to a dense sardine population, targeted by fishing boats, as well as numerous other species, such as threatened sharks and mobulids like whale sharks and giant manta rays.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species categorises whale sharks and giant mantas as ‘Endangered’, reef mantas as ‘Vulnerable to Extinction’, and the various devil ray species as either ‘Endangered’ or ‘Vulnerable’. Because these filter-feeders are found in an area with such high fishing activity, they are commonly caught accidentally, particularly in gillnets. And as these rays need to keep swimming forwards to breathe by moving water over their gills, getting stuck in a net can be fatal. Often, their desperate attempts to free themselves by tumbling and rolling around just tangle them further in the nets.

Manta and devil rays are also actively targeted by fisheries, but this wasn’t always the case. Traditionally, fishers weren’t particularly interested in catching rays as they aren’t considered as tasty as bony fish like tuna, cod, and herring. But as other fish stocks have plummeted, people have turned to targeting mobulids too – for food, partly. Local people in these coastal areas eat shark and ray meat, says Egin: “It’s said to be cheaper than egg, chicken, or meat so it’s an affordable source of protein.”