In Celebration of World Manta Day, Prana by Atzaró Spotlights Raja Ampat’s Magic Mountain – One of the World’s Great Manta Cleaning Stations
This World Manta Day, Prana by Atzaró – the world’s largest and most luxurious traditional phinisi yacht- is turning the spotlight on one of Raja Ampat’s most extraordinary encounters with the ocean’s gentle giants: the dive and snorkel site known as ‘Magic Mountain’.
World Manta Day, founded by the Manta Trust in 2020, is marked every 17 September to raise awareness of the threats facing manta and devil rays, from unregulated fishing and bycatch to unsustainable tourism.
Both the giant oceanic manta and the reef manta are listed as threatened by the IUCN, and with mantas maturing late and giving birth to a single pup only once every few years, their populations recover slowly from any loss. The day has become a global rallying point for dive operators, researchers, and ocean-lovers to celebrate these animals and to promote responsible ways of experiencing them in the wild.
Few places on Earth make that celebration easier than Raja Ampat, and few sites within it are as iconic as Magic Mountain. This dive site sits within the waters that Prana by Atzaró explores each season as part of its charter yacht Raja Ampat itinerary. Built from solid teak and ironwood, the 55-metre, nine-suite luxury phinisi yacht takes Raja Ampat luxury travel to annother level – guests can sail through the Four Kings archipelago combining a full-charter experience with genuine access to one of the last great marine wildernesses.
Also known as ‘Shadow Reef’, this submerged seamount off Misool in southern Raja Ampat rises dramatically from deep water and hosts multiple manta cleaning stations, where oceanic and reef mantas glide in to be tended by wrasse and other reef fish. Divers regularly share the water with reef sharks, dense schools of fish, and soft-coral-covered ridges, and, notably, the site’s shallower cleaning station makes it accessible to strong snorkellers, as well as certified divers, offering a rare surface-level window into manta behaviour.
There are multiple sites that are good for Mantas in Raja Ampat, but Magic Mountain ‘aka’ Shadow Reef (Karang Bayangan in Indonesian) is one of a only handful of cleaning stations in the world where you can often see both Reef mantas (Mobula alfredi) and Oceanic mantas (Mobula birostris) sharing the same cleaning station.
Onboard dive guides lead guests to Misool’s signature sites, including Magic Mountain, as part of a wider itinerary that also takes in the region’s limestone karsts, mangrove-lined waterways, and remote island communities.
“World Manta Day is a moment to pause and recognise how fragile these encounters really are,” says Vicente Guasch, Chief Global Officer, Atzaró Collection,
“Watching an oceanic manta circle a cleaning station at Magic Mountain is one of the most humbling things you can experience in the ocean. Our role with our luxury expedition yacht Indonesia, is to bring guests to that moment responsibly – respecting the mantas’ space, following local codes of conduct, and supporting the conservation work that keeps sites like this thriving for the next generation of divers and snorkellers.”
(In Celebration of World Manta Day, Prana by Atzaró Spotlights Raja Ampat’s Magic Mountain – One of the World’s Great Manta Cleaning Stations)
