Oceanic Manta Adventure: Saving the Angels of the Sea
by Sy Montgomery
Clarion Books (October 6, 2026) 9781328987297
From the Publisher:
In this newest addition to the acclaimed Scientists in the Field series, Sibert Medalist, National Book award honoree, and New York times bestselling author Sy Montgomery dives below the surface to study giant manta rays in Ecuador, along the scientists who hope to protect them. Illustrated with underwater photography by Patrick Joyce, this is science at its best.
On the vast Pacific, the ocean heaves and sighs like a beating heart. But dive beneath the waves, and angels appear. Giant manta rays, wider than a car is long, with wingspans stretching up to twenty feet—glide past with balletic grace, then vanish into the murky blue. They can plunge to depths of nearly a mile, race at twenty-two miles an hour, and live form the 50 years. With the largest brain of any fish on Earth. They are among the ocean’s most intelligent and mysterious creatures.
But even the most magnificent creatures are fragile. Because mantas grow up slowly—reaching maturity at seven to ten years—and raise just a single pup every few years, they are uniquely vulnerable. Only recently did scientists discover that these “angels of the sea” are hovering at the edge of extinction.
Sy Montgomery and Patrick Joyce join scientist Michel Guerreo and his team to search for mantas in Ecuador’s plankton-rich waters, record their sightins, chart their locations, and note their behaviors and the conditions around them. The work will test the team. The ocean will challenge them. But as they struggle and learnt hey may also be transformed by their encounters with one of the largest, most mysterious, and most imperiled beings ever to swim the sea.
— Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection for elementary and middle grade categories
