A random act of kindness. And a smart manta ray.

“A manta ray with fishing hooks stuck under her eye was rescued by passing divers after recognising one of them as a regular in the water.

Jake Wilton, an underwater photographer who guides tourists around Australia's Ningaloo Bay, spotted the popular animal, dubbed 'Freckles', in distress.

Extraordinary footage shows the 30-year-old ray approaching Mr Wilton and his colleagues in a desperate bid for help to remove the hooks.

The manta ray spreads her wings before Mr Wilton and after several attempts the diver is able to take the hooks from under her eye.

'She got closer and closer and then started unfurling to present the eye to me,' he said.

'I knew we had to get the hooks out of her eye or she would have been in big trouble.'

After a few attempts, Mr Wilton needed one final dive to clear the hooks.

'I went down for one last try and the manta stayed completely still in the water,' he said.

The video shows Jake rise triumphantly from the ocean with the hooks before the ray swims majestically away…”

https://mol.im/a/7236185

Outstanding. Job well done.

Thanks for sharing.

That’s pretty cool. Kudos to the guy for making multiple attempts and being brave enough to do so.

That reminds me of the dolphin in Hawaii that allowed a diver to remove fishing line tangled in its flipper.

That is flat out incredible ! Thanks for sharing.

MDS

As a diver myself I really enjoy these stories. I've never had the opportunity to do much more than gather the occasional trash I find on dives.

Good karma headed that guy's way for sure.

It's stories like this that make me question my diet.

Critters have more 'soul' than we ever give them credit for. Thank goodness there are people around who recognize this and are unafraid to do something about it. Courage. We need more of it.

You'd be surprised at how gentle some fierce-looking sea creatures can be. The moray eel, if swimming out in the open, will let people hand-feed it. (You can still lose your hand, so the treat needs to be held on the end of a stick.) I know of no case where killer whales (in the wild) have attacked a human on porpoise.

Mantas perhaps get a rep they don’t deserve, probably from looking like stingrays. The only danger they pose is possibly having one crash into you- they get quite large.

It’s pretty amazing how critters that don’t seem to have a lot of intelligence are smarter than they seem when they recognize that humans can actually help them. Good on the diver.

“Freckles, the manta ray, who garnered world-wide attention after she stopped a pair of divers in a bid to get a fishing hook removed from under her eye is doing well, according to one of the people who helped her.

Her rescuer, Australian diver, Jake Wilton, checked in on the ray in Australia's Ningaloo Bay and believes the majestic creature may have recognised him.

'I went down for a dive [to check up on her] and she stopped and hung around for about 30 seconds above me - it was pretty wild,' he told BBC News.

'They have self-awareness and can recognise individual manta rays, so she could have recognised me.' …”

https://mol.im/a/7247929

P.S. I find it credible that Freckles recognized him. When I lived in Florida I had a friend who was an avid scuba diver. He also had a large saltwater aquarium, and populated it with fish that he captured on dives. If he decided that one of them wasn’t suitable, he’d return it to the reef where it came from.

He told me that one of those returned fish would come out to greet him when he visited its reef. I knew him well, and trusted his account.