As data connoisseurs, there’s not much we haven’t asked our panels over the years. But despite our decades of question-writing skills, our team were tasked with something that challenged even the most creative thinker amongst us…
One fine, sunny day, our MD Brian came into our inboxes with the most perplexing of requests - “Can you come up with a name for a Manta Ray?”
Now, context is key. We’ve been working with our lovely client Nick from Deep Blue for the past six years. Nick is a massive scuba diver and a long-term supporter of The Manta Trust, a fantastic charity that coordinates global manta and devil ray research and conservation efforts and he approached us to see if we'd help them out.
One of their team was looking to survey visitors to Fuvamulah to test the idea of a conservation fee. They wanted to build a survey where they could ask dive centres and hotels to pass to visitors via a QR code.
The challenge was that, given some of the things they wanted to do, the typical self-serve survey tools weren’t going to cut the mustard - so we worked with them to develop something that would be suited to their needs. As a thank you, they asked if we wanted to name a Manta Ray and quite frankly, who could say no to that!
Our Manta Ray is an elusive lady - she’s only been spotted once in 2021, enjoying the warm waters of the Maldives. And when your home is as picturesque as hers, we can hardly blame her. If it were up to us, we’d only be sighted once every few years too.
After scouring the deserts of Tatooine and plunging the mulchy swamps of Dagobah, the Omnisis team – aka our brave gang of rebels (well, our Software Developer Rick) – came up with a winning moniker: Darth Rayder.
We had some very entertaining suggestions along the way - from Omniray, to Manta Clause, Samanta and Tomb Raydar. Not only has the name Darth Rayder been adopted by the Manta Trust, but we have an official certificate of adoption, too.
When Darth was last sighted, she was pregnant - so by now, her sweet, slippery offspring will be floating around the Maldives as well. And before you ask, no, we are not going on a team away day to the Maldives to try and spot her and the baby!
And just when you thought things couldn’t get any cooler, we recently discovered that the market research work we did for the Manta Trust helped them with a prize at the Marine Science Symposium in the Maldives.
Congratu-ray-tions (we’ll see ourselves out).