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First Documented Instance of a Remora Hiding in a Reef Manta Ray's Cloaca Recorded in Seychelles

In the remote Amirantes Island in Seychelles lies D'Arros Island - an important reef manta ray aggregation site, the largest known in the Seychelles Archipelago. On a routine reef manta ray monitoring dive, research officer at the Save Our Seas Foundation D'Arros Research Centre, Ellie Moulinie, photographed a two-metre-wide (6.5-foot) juvenile male reef manta ray, feeding at the ocean’s surface, with a single white suckerfish hitching a ride near his right pelvic fin. The relaxed reef manta ray swam closer to Ellie, but his passenger was less than thrilled about this move and skedaddled between the pelvic fins and into the cloaca (the all-in-one exit for the manta’s digestive and reproductive functions).