Four Seasons marks 20 years protecting manta rays in the Maldives

You're underwater in Hanifaru Bay, visibility murky, when a shadow materializes in the distance. It resolves into a reef manta ray—three metres across, wings undulating as it descends toward the cleaning station below. Two more follow, each one gliding with the same unhurried grace, their distinctive head fins leading them down to the coral reef where smaller fish will pick parasites and dead skin from their bodies. One circles back so close you could touch it. You don't. The rules are clear: this is their world, and you are a visitor.

You're here because your phone rang. This morning, when you checked into the Four Seasons Landaa Giraavaru on its own island in the Baa Atoll, you were handed a mobile and told that if it rang, you had thirty minutes to reach the marine centre, board a boat, and get to the bay. The call came while you were halfway through a massage. You wrapped up, made the briefing, and now you're in the water, snorkel in place, trying not to splash.

This is the Manta On Call programme, an optional add-on for hotel guests. There is no performance here, no guarantee. When the phone rings, it means the rays are actually out there. When they don't show, you don't go. The hotel has been running this operation for two decades now, since 2006, in partnership with the Manta Trust, a UK-based nonprofit founded by Guy Stevens. The partnership is marking its twentieth anniversary as the world observes World Manta Day on September 17.

By the end of your excursion, you've counted seven reef manta rays, plus a smaller stingray that circled beneath you the whole time. Seven feels remarkable until you hear other guests' stories of being surrounded by dozens. But this is nature, and sightings are never guaranteed. A full moon typically brings the largest aggregations—the bay can fill with hundreds of rays when tidal conditions align around new and full moons—but today is quiet. Seven is a gift.

What makes this work is that the science is real and the protocols are strict. Scientists use photo identification to track individual rays across years, recognizing each one by the unique spot patterns on its underside. Hanifaru Bay, part of the Baa Atoll, was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2011 and is one of the most significant manta aggregation sites on the planet. The hotel's funding has supported research that extends far beyond the guest experience. In 2025 alone, the Manta Trust conducted 1,282 manta surveys over 143 research days, documenting 4,265 reef manta ray sightings, 28 whale sharks, 16 devil rays, and 10 oceanic mantas. That work contributed to a major conservation victory: all ten manta and devil ray species were uplisted to CITES Appendix I, granting them the highest level of international protection.

The rays themselves remain vulnerable. They are classified as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. In some parts of the world, they are hunted for their gill plates, which are sold into traditional medicine markets. They are caught as by-catch in fishing nets. Like all marine life, they depend on ocean conditions and the plankton they feed on—conditions that are shifting. The Maldives itself, barely a metre above sea level on average and the world's lowest-lying country, faces an existential threat from rising seas.

But there is hope in what has been built here. Ecotourism is a term that has been diluted by overuse, applied to operations that are neither rigorous nor genuinely protective. What the Four Seasons and the Manta Trust have constructed at Hanifaru Bay is different. The wildlife remains genuinely wild. The encounters last only seconds—you move through a world you glimpse briefly, careful not to disturb. The mantas are simply going about their business, as they would be whether you were there or not. And yet your presence, your willingness to fund the research and respect the boundaries, makes their survival more likely. That is the bargain, and it appears to be holding.