You may not know this yet, but all life on earth is interconnected. Rain falls to rivers, rivers to the sea, and the sun heats the surface of the sea until it becomes the vapor that forms clouds (and then it all starts over again!). And that is just one example! The same is true for ecosystems, or biological communities of organisms. Each organism has an important role to play within their ecosystem. So, why are mantas so important in ocean ecosystems?
Mantas spend a lot of their time feeding in the sunlight zone of the ocean. The sunlight zone of the ocean is everything the sunlight touches, and is also called the epipelagic zone. Because some animals need sunlight to survive and some do not, the ecosystems in the sunlight zone are very different from the ecosystems in the deeper ocean, like the twilight (or mesopelagic) and midnight (or bathypelagic) zones. Mantas make deep dives throughout the deep mesopelagic and very shallow bathypelagic zones to feed on plankton and small fish! After these dives, they return to the surface to warm up, and while they’re warming up, they poop. This is called nutrient cycling!
