Tori was fighting an impossible fight. Pulling and pushing, she jerked her body desperately trying to untangle herself. Twisting and turning, her fear and panic grew by a minute. The manta ray did all she could to free herself from the plastic fishing net wrapped around her body, without any luck. The deep blue ocean was vast and full of possibilities and yet she was stuck, fighting for her life.
'I can't breathe!' she panicked. 'If I don't get rid of this thing I'm going to die here' she cried. 'Help! Help!' she called.
Many fish responded to her desperate call rushing to help. Yet, quickly, it became clear that they were just as helpless. Not knowing what to do they just circled around her trying to come up with an idea. They had seen other manta rays die in those nets before and now seeing Tori entangled they feared she would share their fate. It made them feel all really sad and hopeless.
Tori still could swim although it was getting harder and harder to manoeuvre, being so tightly wrapped in the net. Yet, she knew she couldn't stop because stopping to swim for her meant stopping to breathe. And she could not die, not just yet. In her desperation she left the sympathetic yet helpless fish behind and swam towards pointy rocks she knew so well. She had an idea, you see.
Against any reason she swam close to the rocks and tried to catch the corner of the net on them. On her seventh attempt she finally managed to get the fishing net hooked on one of the sticking out rocks. The real test was starting now, and she knew it, because if she didn't manage to free herself, she would die there wrapped in the net attached to the rocks. So she pulled, pulled as hard as she could, but the net wouldn't badge. It was made out of plastic and it wasn't easy to break through. She gathered all her strength and pulled again. Tori was losing strength. Since she couldn't swim, there wasn't much water with oxygen passing through her gills meaning she would soon be unable to breathe. In the last attempt to save her life, she backed towards the rocks and then with all her remaining strength she pulled until the net started cracking and finally let her go. It was just pure luck that this net had been drifting in the ocean for fifty years already by which point it was more fragile and easier to break. Otherwise, like so many before her, Tori would have suffocated in the net left behind by a careless fishing ship.
The joy of freedom was enormous. Tori was never so thrilled in her life to be able to swim freely, to glide in the vast ocean. Free from her prison at last, she swam in a glorious dance of freedom. Gliding through the vast ocean like birds in the sky, other manta rays joined Tori in her celebration of life. They all shared the secret, you see. They were expectant mothers-to-be. A year had passed since their babies started to grow from little eggs inside their bodies. Now it was time to release them. To give birth to their babies so they could enjoy the abundance of the magnificent ocean.
The manta ray mothers brought to the world their tiny babies, perfect copies of themselves. And a giant twenty nine foot Tori was one of them.
