Dear Friends,

I have just received the following from Gisela and Carsten Kaufman who were in Yap shooting a feature documentary on the manta rays of the world.  The Yap portion featured Dr. Kathy Townsend, the Lead Scientist for Project Manta at the University of Queensland.

We haven’t seen the film yet but these folks were wonderful to work with and I, for one, had a lot of fun with them.  Be sure to look for this on your local stations and please feel free to offer comments on this blog, on our facebook page and/or directly to Gisela and Carsten via snail mail.  Their address is below.

Thank you and happy diving,

Bill Acker

Here is Gisela’s text:

Hello everyone,

Exciting news. We’ve just been informed that National Geographic will premiere our manta film soon, in fact has done so in some territories already. e.g. in the UK (please excuse we couldn’t inform you earlier, we simply didn’t know).

Nat Geo and its various channels use the film title ‘Manta Mystery‘ and are running a shorter 43 min version (original is 52 min). These are the various international dates we’ve been advised of:

Nat Geo Wild UK: 5. June 2011 @ 8 pm  (please check repeat times, currently listed for most weekends)
Nat Geo Wild HD UK: 5. June 2011 @ 8 pm  (please check repeat times, currently listed for most weekends)

Nat Geo Wild Asia: 21. June 2011 @ 8 pm
Nat Geo Wild HD Asia: 21. June 2011 @ 8 pm

Nat Geo Wild Latin America: 21. June 2011 @ 9 pm
Nat Geo Wild NGCE (Central Europe): 25. July 2011 @ 10 pm
Nat Geo Japan: 26. August 2011 @ 10 pm

Nat Geo’s premieres in Australia, France and Italy haven’t been scheduled yet (public broadcasters hold first rights here, no dates set). The US rights are still pending.
We should be able to send out DVDs of the original version (titled ‘Project Manta’) by late July.

Hope you can track the mantas on your local TV listings and/or spread the news!
We’d love to hear any feedback.

Thank you all so much for your brilliant team work!

Best,
Gisela & Carsten

KAUFMANN Productions Pty Ltd
P.O. Box 596
Paddington/Sydney
NSW 2021
Australia