I’ve always felt calm and comfortable around the ocean. As young as three years old, I could spend hours on the beach looking for shells and interesting animals. When I was a teenager, I could usually be found windsurfing or bodyboarding. I later discovered scuba diving and had my first encounters with marine megafauna about a year ago, when I volunteered with the Marine Megafauna Foundation (MMF) in Mozambique.

The conservation field has been a consistent interest for me throughout my life. My studies in environmental engineering and management made me aware of all the threats marine ecosystems are facing, but it was only when I had the opportunity to work with MMF and to see how real and complex these threats were that I finally made my choice of career.

My first encounter with a smalleye stingray was incredible, something I’ll always remember. It was on a weekend dive in August 2018, and I had never experienced such a poor visibility underwater (2-3m maximum and dark green water). Yet, while we were struggling to find our way on the dive site, a smalleye stingray swam past us, gently flapping its pectoral fins. I stopped thinking for a second while my brain identified the brown dinosaur-like ray. I was fascinated. Then everything happened in a flash. After signalling to the dive leader, I kicked to position myself above the ray and photograph the spot pattern, and then swam below it to check the sex. Even though it was swimming relatively slowly, I knew I had to be quick so as not to lose the dive group. In less than ten seconds, the ray was gone. The encounter was so brief and just unbelievable. I wondered whether it had all been a dream.

Despite their size, smalleye stingrays are very elusive animals and thus poorly understood within the scientific and diving communities. Even though they are reportedly distributed throughout the Indo-West Pacific, there have been very few encounters with free swimming individuals in the wild. Tofo Beach in Mozambique is so far the best location to study them in the wild with about 20 rays spotted every year. With so few occasions to see these rays, it takes years, even decades, to collect significant data.