When a dead manta ray washed ashore in South Florida in 2017, it set off a chain of events that would change science. Local biologist Jessica Pate got the call. She told everyone to leave it untouched—and then she phoned her mentor, renowned manta expert Andrea Marshall, co-founder of the Marine Megafauna Foundation (MMF). On the other end of the line, Marshall didn’t hesitate: “Buckle up, this is going to be the biggest day of your career.”

That manta would help confirm what Marshall had suspected for years. Back in 2010, while diving off Mexico’s Yucatán, she encountered manta rays unlike any she’d studied before. They weren’t the familiar reef or oceanic mantas—this was something entirely new.

Now, fifteen years later, together with Pate and Brazilian researcher Nayara Bucair from the University of São Paulo, they have formally described a third species of manta ray, called the Atlantic manta ray. The findings are published in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes. Named Mobula yarae, after Yara, a water spirit from Indigenous Brazilian mythology, the species inhabits tropical and subtropical waters from the eastern United States to Brazil, including the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.

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Once thought to be a single species, manta rays were reclassified into two distinct species after six years of research led by Marshall: the giant manta (Mobula birostris) and the reef manta (Mobula alfredi), based on differences in size, range and genetics.

In 2022, Marshall used social media to share her journey of discovering a new species of manta (the first time). "It was one of the largest species discoveries of the last 50 years. It was huge for me as an early-career scientist and such a privilege to go through every step of the process. Did I ever expect to do something like that again? Hell no. Not a chance. So it was one of the shocks of my life to jump into the warm waters off the Yucatán in Mexico about a year later and come face to face with what I instantly knew was a third species of manta ray."

Marshall suffered a severe brain aneurysm and stroke in early 2024 and has been on long-term medical leave. Pate and Bucair finalized the work needed to confirm the species.

The dead manta is now preserved at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., where it serves as the holotype—the reference specimen used to formally describe and define a new species. Finding a whole preserved manta in the Atlantic is exceedingly rare, says Pate. Mantas sink when they're not swimming and they're made of cartilage, which decomposes really rapidly, she added. “It was just a really rare opportunity that allowed us to get all the precise measurements that you can't get for a free swimming manta and observe things under the microscope, like the skin and teeth.

Getting the manta to the Smithsonian was no easy feat. First, Pate and her team drove it a couple of hours north to Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. During a quick stop for gas, they accidentally left a large pool of manta blood by the pumps. “Who knows what people thought about that,” Pate joked in a social media post.

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Later, when Marshall began the long drive from Florida to D.C. with the frozen specimen, she was pulled over just four hours in. To prove she had proper research permits, she had to unpack the carefully insulated truck bed and reveal the manta itself. From there, her main concern was keeping the animal cold for the rest of the journey.

So, how can you tell the Atlantic manta apart from the others? It’s still pretty difficult, as it shares a lot of characteristics with the other two species. According to MMF, this manta is similar to giant mantas because it has dark coloring on its back and wide fins. However, its lighter face and belly spots are more like reef mantas. Key features to tell it apart include white V-shaped patches on its shoulders (instead of T-shaped like giant mantas), a lighter-colored face, belly spots only on the stomach, and a size usually between 15 to 18 feet, though younger manta rays seen near the coast are often smaller.

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The formal description of a species is imperative for conservation efforts, says Pate, so that it can be recognized under the U.S. Endangered Species Act or the International Union for Conservation of Nature. For Pate, she’ll continue to study the Atlantic manta rays along the coast of South Florida to identify critical habitat and threats, such as fishery interactions and boat strikes. Just a few years ago, she discovered the coast is a nursery area for juvenile mantas.

“None of this would have been possible if Andrea hadn't just spent years describing the first two species and studying them in such intricate detail,” says Pate. “Without that dedicated study that she had put in I think this would have gone unnoticed.”