![]() ![]() ![]() To study the giant rays, Pate surveys the coast from her 22-foot boat, from Boynton Beach to Jupiter looking for dark shadows at the surface. She was surprised to see the rays so close to the beach, but even more surprised that there were virtually no published studies about these animals. Pate said she has been intrigued by rays since her days as a sea turtle biologist, watching them cruise the shoreline while she surveyed the beach for nests. “If it weren’t for my cats, I might not have started the Florida Manta Project,” said Pate, adding that the project is under the larger international nonprofit Marine Megafauna Foundation that protects threatened marine species and critical habitat worldwide. In 2016, Pate founded the Florida Manta Project to learn more about the understudied manta rays off the coast of South Florida. Pate also knew her passion was to study manta rays. However, when Pate’s sister could no longer care for the cats, Pate knew they needed a home and moved back to Florida to care for them. When Pate graduated from FAU in 2014, she left her cats with her sister and spent the next 18 months sailing the ocean as a marine science instructor for an educational study abroad organization. Her findings were recently published in the journal of Endangered Species Research. She had no idea then, but that decision would ultimately change the course of her entire career, putting her on a path to discover the world’s first urban nursery ground for manta rays. In her first semester of graduate school at Florida Atlantic University, Jessica Pate adopted a pair of feral kittens. ![]()
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