Of mantas & men

A rather charming story was reported in a national newspaper recently. The article was about a film called The Last Dive, documenting the extraordinary relationship between a now 83-year-old American sailor and ex-Hell’s Angel, Terry Kennedy, and a Pacific manta ray he names Willy.

For those not familiar with them, manta rays are large sea creatures (in this case six metres wide). They also have the largest brain-to-body ratio of any fish, and apparently can recognise themselves in a mirror.

Kennedy and one particularly distinctive manta ray formed an unlikely friendship lasting decades, with the fish regularly “coming up to Kennedy’s boat and slapping his fin against the hull, [waiting] for Kennedy to climb on his back before taking off for a ride…” They would sometimes travel two miles away, before the fish delivered Kennedy safely back to his boat every time.

On several occasions, the ray appeared to show Kennedy large, discarded fishing nets clogging up the sea floor, which Kennedy then arranged to be retrieved and disposed of. And during one swim, the fish acted to protect Kennedy from an 18-feet-long hammerhead shark, repeatedly putting itself between them.

We cannot know for sure, of course, but perhaps just here and there in the natural world we get a lingering glimpse of how human beings and other creatures might have interacted had the Fall not taken place. It’s a vision sketched out in C.S. Lewis’s novel Voyage to Venus, where the inhabitants of the planet Perelandra are in a kind of Edenic communion with the animals there, marked by peace, respect and harmony.

And we look ahead to the days when, according to Isaiah 11:6, “the wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.”

Currently the film only appears to be having a limited number of screenings in the US and in New Zealand, so all of us outside those nations may have to wait until it arrives on a streaming platform in order to see it.

Amid the disheartening, bleak and sometimes depressing news stories that we all encounter regularly, it is sometimes encouraging to hear of offbeat positive items such as this.

And to be reminded that, whatever life is currently like on our planet, we look for a new heaven and a new earth “where righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3v13).