"This is a big catch, the biggest ever single seizure of ivory at the port of Mombasa," said Kiberenge Seroney, the port's police officer in charge of criminal investigations. "We fail to understand where one gathers the courage to park such enormous quantities of ivory, hoping that they can slip through our security systems."

Poaching is a growing problem for sub-Saharan African countries reliant on rich wildlife in their game reserves to draw foreign tourists.

Heavily-armed criminals kill elephants and rhinos for their tusks, which are used for ornaments and in some folk medicines. Most of the elephant tusks smuggled from Africa ends up in Asian countries, according to police.

On Jan. 5, poachers killed a family of 11 elephants in the biggest single mass shooting of the animals on record in Kenya, wildlife officials said.

Gitau Gitau, an assistant commissioner with the Kenya Revenue Authority, said paperwork accompanying a container at the port of Mombasa declared it contained decorative stones.

"But when we opened it we found elephant tusks," said Gitau as he displayed the ivory. "The ivory was originating from Rwanda and Tanzania and was to be exported to Indonesia."

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RAJA AMPAT, Indonesia – The remote Indonesian archipelago of Raja Ampat is home to an underwater treasure trove of coral reefs and tremendous biodiversity, miles away from polluted urban centers and human encroachment.

The faraway islands in Western Papua, regarded by many marine experts as having the potential to help restore the world's ailing coral reefs, are vulnerable to the unchecked exploitation of a lucrative treasure that is rapidly disappearing from Indonesia's waters: sharks.

China's growing appetite for the de rigueur shark fin soup has attracted fishermen from elsewhere in Indonesia and Southeast Asia to the waters around Raja Ampat's 1,500 islands.

Alarmed, conservationists and local villagers worked together to create the Misool Eco Resort and Conservation Center in 2005, establishing a 165-square-mile "No-Take Zone" that banned fishing.

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When a neighboring village requested to take part, the area was expanded to 472 square miles, roughly the size of the city of Los Angeles.

The Misool team also recruited a group of rangers to help patrol the waters for illegal fishermen. Earlier this year, NBC News had an opportunity to go on patrol with Abdul Razak Tamher, 31, one of the first rangers.

Q: Before 2005, what were shark and fish stocks like in this area of Raja Ampat?

A: Before 2005, one of the main occupations of the people of my village was fishing. That's what we did every day and one of the big things fished were sharks. By the 2000s there were very few sharks left in the area, but in the 1980s and 90s when I was fishing there were lots of sharks. A lot of people used dynamite and potassium cyanide for fishing.

Q: So did villagers in Misool know they had to change the way things were done?

A: At that time, people here really didn't think much about shark or marine conservation. We didn't know shark fishing was illegal (prior to the formation of the No-Take Zone in 2005, the local governor had actually signed a law against shark fishing) because nobody from the government came out here to tell or educate us that it was illegal and bad for the ecology to fish sharks.

It was really through the efforts of the resort to educate the village about the importance of sharks and protecting the marine environment that we saw the importance of it and began to appreciate the natural beauty ourselves. Now if people from my village hear of a shark fishing boat coming into this area, they get really upset.

Q: Is conservation a completely foreign idea here? Isn't there a long tradition of seasonal fishing and spiritual beliefs around protecting certain animals?

A: We've embraced principles of conservation since the beginning of our culture. They were simple ideas, but they still worked for us. For example, we would harvest clams from the ocean for six months, then depending on the ocean conditions, we would close that area for sometimes up to a year before harvesting again.

Many of the original families in this area are forbidden to eat different sea creatures like sharks or turtles or other kinds of fish. In each case, there is a reason why each family respects and protects a certain animal. It could be that a family member or fisherman generations ago was rescued by that species or guided to land at a time of need. Many still believe that if someone in the family breaks this taboo, they will get sick or something bad will happen.

Q: In 2006, the rangers were formed with just five of you and a few of you were actually former shark fishermen. What made you make such a dramatic change in your life?

 A: I personally wasn't involved in shark fishing, but other original rangers that were here in the beginning and their village elders were shark fishermen. Even though they were shark fishermen and lived off the harvest of the ocean, they realized that they needed to preserve this area and the marine life for future generations to come.

Many of us felt – and still feel today – that if we told our children or grandchildren that there were lots of fish and sharks in the sea around these islands and they went there and saw none they would think that we were liars and we just couldn't allow that to happen.

Q: What was it like in the early days with the rangers?

A: The rangers weren't really effective until 2009 because at that time there was only one speed boat that was always busy getting lumber for the construction of the resort. So we would only go out if we saw an illegal boat go past the resort. From 2006-2009, we went out almost every day. In the months of June and July, the area was choked with shark finning boats from as far away as Java that cast long lines with sometimes 1,000 or 2,000 hooks to catch sharks.

To expel the foreign boats, it wasn't a problem. We would just go up to the boats and tell them leave and they would go. Local fishermen were tougher. Most of the problems had to do with local fishermen not agreeing with the contract we signed with Misool Eco Reserve to create the no-take zones or claiming they were not around when the contract had been reached. They would also say we have it easy since we work as rangers and make a lot of money, so we don't need to fish like they did.

Q: How soon after the reserve formed did you start to see results from the sanctuary?

A: After two or three years, I started to see a lot of sharks in the lagoons and my friends who went diving began to see more fish. There were just some researchers here in Misool who were shocked by the amount of fish who were in the protected areas. The results have just been amazing.

Q: How have the villages in the area adapted to the sanctuary?

A: In the beginning, there were a lot of problems with the villagers not understanding the rangers' mission. The most important thing we did to get people behind us was to use Adat, or traditional Papuan village law. This was done by developing a close relationship with the ancestral village head, as he holds the power of the village and so people will listen to what he says. If we didn't have the village head, then it would have been difficult to enforce the rules of the sanctuary.

Q: What's next for the rangers in the coming years?

A: We all hope the ranger patrol can continue forever and that we have the resources to keep recruiting young people from the villages to the patrol. We now have three ranger stations built and we hope to have three rangers in every station with small, fuel-efficient boats that can be used to spot illegal fishermen and intercept them until support can show up.

The other big problem we'd like to fix is communication. Radio communication in this region of Raja Ampat is difficult because all the radios we have now are line-of-sight and the islands interfere with signal within short distances. The plan is to build a main radio/repeater station that will cover the entire area so that there is clear contact throughout the sanctuary.

To donate to the Misool ranger patrols, click here.

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By Rebecca Pilkington-Vincett

A feeding station popular with manta rays is not far from the Misool Eco Resort and Conservation Center in Raja Ampat, eastern Indonesia.

RAJA AMPAT, Indonesia —They’ve been described by one scientist as “pandas of the ocean.”

“They’re such an iconic species, beloved by divers,” said Andrea Marshall, director of the Marine Megafauna Foundation, who came up with the description during an interview with NBC News. “They’re just amazing.” 

Unlikely as it might seem, the panda and the manta ray have a lot in common.

Just as scientists still haven’t been able to confirm the number of pandas in the wild, they also have no idea how many manta rays exist.

“Globally we don’t know how many manta rays there are,” said Guy Stevens, director of the U.K.-based Manta Trust, whose research is largely based around manta populations in the Maldives.

But -- again, like the panda -- scientists think it’s a small population.

“If they’re lucky, (manta rays) have two pups (over several years). That’s a very low reproductive rate, especially compared to your average fish,” said Dr. Heidi Dewar, a biologist at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, part of NOAA.

Anecdotal evidence suggests mantas are under threat, and China may be a major reason for it.

Manta rays are vulnerable on two fronts: as bycatch — getting caught in industrial fishing nets targeting different types of tuna — and, increasingly, because of traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM. 

Manta rays are harvested for their gill rakers, which allow the fish to filter food from water.  Some Chinese believe they have healing properties or are good at cleaning out toxins. One Chinese-language website claims gill rakers enhance the immune system, promote blood circulation and aid in the treatment of cancer, skin disease and infertility.

“It’s just cartilage,” said Dewar, echoing skepticism expressed by many scientists.

Medicinal fad?
Conservationists say manta rays aren’t even considered “traditional” medicine and argue no reference to the animal can be found in TCM books dating back a century. But with rising incomes that enable Chinese consumers to readily adopt medicinal fads, the impact on manta rays has accelerated over the past 10 to 15 years. 

“A lot of it is completely unrecorded,” said Stevens, who worked on a project founded by Shark Savers and WildAid to document the scope of gill-raker harvesting. 

Understanding the beauty and diversity of Raja Ampat, aka 'Underwater Eden'

Researchers looked at the location, value and species involved. “It does seem the majority of all of those gills that are being traded are ending up in China,” Stevens said.

The conclusion, published in a report called Manta Ray of Hope, found that roughly 3,400 manta rays and 94,000 mobulas (related to the manta ray family) are caught each year, but the numbers reflect only reported catches. “Unreported and subsistence fisheries will mean true landings are much higher,” the report said. 

On patrol with a shark ranger in Indonesia's marine treasure trove

Visits to random TCM shops in Beijing and Shanghai turned up no gill rakers. In fact, a veteran pharmacist at Tongrentang, a long-established purveyor of traditional Chinese and herbal medicines, said she had never heard of manta rays being used this way.

But the Manta Ray of Hope report estimates a mature ocean manta could yield up to 15 pounds of dried gills that can bring in as much as $230 a pound in a market in China. 

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Marshall said she has noticed an uptick in manta fishing. “I’ve been (in Mozambique) in the last decade … and we’ve seen an 87 percent decline in the population because of the fishing.” 

Unlike many shippers, Chinese merchants who transport cheap products from the mainland for export to Africa “want to fill [their unloaded cargo vessels] with resources wherever they go.  In Africa, they fill it up with wood, fish or shark’s fin,” she said. “They’ll go out to the local fisheries along the coastline and scout for these products.” 

The scientist has spoken to members of local communities, who say the Chinese offer “new nets, new lines, new hooks. (The Chinese traders) say to them, ‘If you get the sharks or the mantas or the turtles, you get all the meat. You can keep all the meat. You just sell us the things you don’t normally eat.'” 

Protecting a ‘threatened’ species
Mantas were listed last year as “threatened” under the international Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has classified the manta ray as “vulnerable” to extinction. 

PhotoBlog: Raja Ampat archipelago: The world's last paradise

Chinese scientists have also weighed in. 

“In the last two years, we have conducted evaluations of the manta ray and submitted a recommendation to the government to list it as a protected species,” said Professor Wang Yanmin from Shandong University’s Marine College.

“There is no regulation for protecting the manta ray so sales of mantas are not illegal,” said Feng Yongfeng, founder of Green Beagle, a group that promotes environmental protection.

Groups like Manta Trust are focusing on getting manta rays listed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). But scientists have their work cut out for them. 

“It’s very difficult to get listed on CITES.  They ask for a lot of detail that is difficult to pin down,” said Marshall.  “Maybe in the terrestrial world, biologists can provide those kinds of details.  When you’re talking about the megafauna [or large marine species] world, it’s very difficult.” 

Marshall – who discovered a second type of manta ray in 2008 and is in the process of identifying a third -- acknowledges little is known about them.

AFP - Getty Images file

A huge manta ray weighing more than 2,200 pounds and measuring nearly 9 yards in length was caught off the eastern coast of China this past September.

Manta births a mystery 
Vexing questions include the manta’s life span, details of their reproductive ecology and migratory patterns. 

“I could wrap my life up in 20 minutes if I could talk to them,” she joked.  “It has been driving me insane for the last ten years because I haven’t been able to figure out where they give birth.  It’s 2012 and nobody has ever seen a manta give birth in the wild.” 

And research is painstaking. For one, concentrations of the animal tend to be around far-flung islands. Stevens of Manta Trust cited the costs of tracking mantas and the difficulty in locating and knowing how to study them. 

With technological improvements, however, scientists are gaining some ground. Satellite tags are one way to help the research. “What do they do when we can’t observe them? I’d love to follow an animal to find out how they spend their time,” said Stevens. “The tagging gives you small glimpses of them.” 

Two dive instructors at the Misool Eco Resort and Conservation Center in Raja Ampat have uncovered a revenue stream to offset research costs: tourism.

“One manta ray can raise $1 million (U.S. dollars) in tourism income over its lifetime,” said Rebecca Pilkington-Vincett, citing a figure contained in the Manta Ray of Hope report.

PhotoBlog: Raja Ampat archipelago: The world's last paradise

With the blessing of the resort, Pilkington-Vincett and Calvin Beale launched a research project off the surrounding reefs.  

Last season, the duo raised $32,000 from donations by recreational divers who accompanied them on dives to gather DNA samples and tag the mantas. 

With the money, they have bought three satellite tags and collected numerous DNA samples.  They are sending off the data to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for analysis by a graduate student. 

With online databases such as the Manta Research Project, where some of Pilkington-Vincett and Beale’s data are logged, or the Manta Matcher, developed by Marshall and operating much “like the FBI fingerprint online database,” research on the manta ray has become rooted in a global exchange among scientists and amateurs alike. 

Until its secrets are fully revealed, the manta’s mystique seems guaranteed. 

“I think it’s fascinating,” said Dewar of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, “that there is such a large and amazing creature that has so many mysteries attached to it.” 

Additional research by Le Li, Johanna Armstrong and Yanzhou Liu.

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