Soon after the landings Mohammed started his work into the mystery behind Gaza’s Mediterranean devils. He has been working along the Palestinian coast since 2001, when he became involved in a project called Gaza Coastal Management that formulated a management plan for marine ecology and tackled local fisheries management and overfishing. All fish species, including sharks and rays, came under his scrutiny, but even as a marine scientist he had not come across the giant devil ray until 2013. ‘Nobody talks about fishing for Mobula mobular in the Eastern Mediterranean and nobody has tackled this issue from a scientific point of view before. I am the first one, which makes me very proud,’ he says.

In fact, very little is known about the giant devil ray anywhere in its range. Until 2011, when Italian biologists published a paper describing its diving behaviour, the only available information came from by-catch data and opportunistic sightings. Growing up to 6.5 metres (21 feet) long and up to five metres (16 feet) wide, but generally seen at about three metres (10 feet) long, the giant devil ray is second in size only to oceanic mantas among the mobulids.

Like the pygmy devil ray, its better-known, flying cousin, the giant devil ray travels in groups, stays close to the surface and migrates across vast distances. It feeds on plankton, small pelagic fishes and krill, and scientists believe that it lives for about 20 years. As in most elasmobranchs, the underlying weakness in the giant devil ray’s capacity to cope with pressure is its very slow rate of reproduction. A female gives birth to only one live pup and is pregnant for a staggering 25 months. Newborns can be almost two metres (6.5 feet) wide and the largest on record weighed 35 kilograms (77 pounds)!

When researching the giant devil ray, the Italian team, led by Simonepietro Canese, satellite-tagged three individuals in the Central Mediterranean and tracked their movements over the next four months. The rays in this population are believed to arrive in the Central Mediterranean in June and July and leave again in mid-September. The satellite data showed that the animals dive to depths of between 600 and 700 metres (2,000 and 2,300 feet), but spend more than 80% of their time between the surface and 50 metres (165 feet), presumably because they prefer the warmer water temperatures of 20–29 degrees Celsius (68–84 degrees Fahrenheit). This tendency to stay close to the surface has made the giant devil ray susceptible to becoming incidental by-catch, especially in floating drift nets that were used to target swordfish – a method that is now illegal. However, the rays are still caught on long-lines and in purse-seine and trawl nets and are also vulnerable to oil spills and heavy marine traffic. The IUCN suspects that over the past 60 years (three generations), 50% of the entire population of giant devil rays in the Mediterranean has disappeared.

Until 2006, Palestinians could travel up to 12 nautical miles in search of fish, but since then they have been limited to fishing within 3–6 nautical miles of the coast. In those last few days of February 2013, the stage was set for a fateful collision between man and ray. A huge aggregation of giant devil rays was travelling along the Gazan coastline, moving with the warmer water and mating. For reasons we may never know, they swam into shallower water, within reach of the hungry Palestinian fishing fleet. The fishing boats had not come across anything like this for six years and the unfortunate mobulas winged their way straight into a wall of purse-seine nets, giving fishermen one of the greatest hauls they had ever seen. For them it was a bounty so great that it had to be a blessing from God, or at least compensation for the misery that the Israeli restrictions had brought to them and their families.

The fishermen were excited by the sheer volume of their catch, but even in Gaza mobula rays are not a desired food source. The meat is sold for a very low price and, as Mohammed explains, ‘Most of the fishermen don’t consume the meat of this species. They say to me, “It’s not nice meat. We don’t like it.”’ Poor people eat the rays because at US$2–3 per kilogram it is affordable; other seafood options can cost as much as US$7–12 per kilogram. Statistically, Palestinians consume the least fish of any nation in the Mediterranean. Even someone who earns well can only afford to eat fish about once a week. Most cannot buy it even once a month.

Fishers will catch whatever they can within the limited fishing zone in order to eke out a living and cover fuel costs. But, according to 39-year-old Nehad El Hessi, most would not choose to target devil rays at all because they generally cannot net the quantities that make it worthwhile. ‘Last year I went to sea several times during the season to catch mobula, but only managed to catch a few,’ he says. ‘The money I earned from selling them did not cover fuel costs and the expense of paying my crew. Going after mobula is something we don’t like doing at all. If we had a choice, we would go for other species, but the permitted fishing zone is empty of fish.’ Ideally, fishermen trawl for shrimps or fish species like mullet and sardines or they catch pelagics, including large sharks. When mobulas are caught, it is generally in purse-seine nets.

In the meantime, the researcher and his team will continue to work with fishermen in a bid to protect Gaza’s mobulas. ‘I believe that at the local level it’s easy to convince our people to take part in conservation. This year we will be conducting conservation awareness sessions with the fishers. We expect that after some very intense workshops, they will voluntarily stop catching shark and ray species,’ he explains. Fishery officials have a very supportive relationship with Gaza’s fishermen and Mohammed has asked them to assist him during workshops. From the sessions he has held so far, he has learnt that fishermen know very little about the life history of elasmobranchs and they were not aware that the giant devil ray is an Endangered species. He has also started conversations with the Palestinian government about formulating a regulatory framework to protect devil rays and other vulnerable elasmobranchs.

Mohammed believes that his efforts are already starting to pay dividends. Of the 150 rays killed so far in 2016, 95 were targeted and 55 were netted as by-catch. Although the overall number has increased, he views this as a positive statistic. If such a large proportion of the animals are being caught unintentionally, it means that fishers are choosing to not target them, which would not have happened in the past.

Conservationists may find it difficult to accept the slaughter of so many endangered animals, but it is just as difficult to not sympathise with the fishermen. In 2000 there were 10,000 people making a modest but stable living from the sea. Since then thousands of families have lost their income and currently 3,500 fishers are working on 700 boats in Palestinian waters and earning less than US$200 per month. Fishermen who have taken the risk of fishing outside the restricted zone in a desperate attempt to increase their catch have lost their boats – in some cases even their lives. Others have been forced to undress at gunpoint and swim from their vessels to Israeli navy boats, regardless of weather conditions.