Captain Kahn’s Great Manta
You and a few friends are having a wonderful time fishing off the New Jersey coast. You’re all laughing as you cast your line into the water, when all of a sudden your boat begins listing to one side. You frantically look over the sides to try and see what is causing it, discovering that your anchor line is being pulled by something deep below.
Advertisement that actually gives a lot of information on the whole situation. Courtesy of Mike’s Maritime Memorabilia.
Capturing the Manta
Captain A.L. Kahn was a wealthy silk manufacturer from New York. On August 26, 1933 he and a few friends went to New Jersey for a fishing expedition, boarding Kahn’s boat, the Miss Pensacola II, they took off for deeper waters. While fishing, his anchor line became tangled up in a large creature deep below the surface. For three hours Kahn and his passengers fought the creature, at some point discovering that it was a giant manta ray. Worried that they might lose the battle with the ray, and fearing that it could capsize the boat, a Coast Guard cutter came to help. They were able to bring the creature to the surface where the Coast Guard had to shoot it 22 times with a high powered rifle before finally killing it.
Newspaper clipping of the giant manta. Courtesy of Deep Sea News.
The “devil fish”, as newspapers dubbed it, was towed to the mainland where it was measured and weighed. It was hoisted ashore at Hansen’s Marina in Brielle, New Jersey where it was measured 20 feet and 5 inches wide and weighed between 5,000 and 6,000 pounds. Word soon spread about the giant creature and crowds lined up to see it. Captain Kahn charged 10 cents per person to see the huge fish, with all proceeds being donated to the local fire department. After just a few days enough money was raised for the fire department to purchase a brand new $3,000 fire engine! The manta ray was then sent to a taxidermist to be preserved and shown at exhibitions, and plans to eventually donate it to a natural history museum.
A picture of the giant ray after being hoisted on land. Courtesy of Brielle Police.
Hoax?
There is a picture (shown below) that makes its rounds on the internet every once in a while that shows the giant manta ray caught by Kahn. The picture shows the creature being suspended by a crane with a man posing in front of it. The ray itself is extremely rigid and stands up solid, not floppy like many sea creatures when they are brought on land. This causes many people to claim the photo to be a hoax. In reality it is a real photo, but the manta pictured is a model made of the one Kahn caught, not the actual animal.
A picture of the full sized model of Kahn’s giant manta ray. Courtesy of Deep Sea News.
Also some dispute the size and weight of the animal, as it is rather extraordinary. However giant manta rays can reach a size of 29 feet in width and up to 5,300 pounds, so the 25 foot 5 inch wide and over 5,000 pound ray that Kahn caught is not outside the realm of possibility. Unfortunately no one knows what happened to the taxidermied model and all the evidence of the giant ray exists only in newspaper clippings and photographs.
Colorized version of the above picture.
If for some reason you want a print of the great manta to hang in your own home then please consider using my affiliate link below:
Personal Thoughts
The ocean both scares and amazes me at times and this is definitely one of those times. It is crazy to think that something this large lives in our oceans, and there’s likely ones even larger than this that no one has ever seen before.
I remember the first time I saw this picture a few years ago and I was skeptical for the same reason many people were and discovered the true story. This odd blips in history interest me and I do wish there was a little more official information on it but I can’t really complain.
Sources
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/giant-manta-ray-photo/
https://www.deepseanews.com/2014/10/the-mysterious-case-of-the-missing-manta-bits/
https://oceana.org/marine-life/sharks-rays/giant-manta-ray
