Black tribal tattoo of a manta ray with a turtle and gecko inside, in a Polynesian-style design across the upper back.

Polynesian manta ray with turtle on upper back

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large manta ray outline frames a central sea turtle, with a gecko-like lizard above it and a diamond-shaped tail point below. The design is built from solid black lines and bold blackwork fills, with curling spirals and fan-shaped motifs in the wings. The photo shows the tattoo in black ink on skin, filling most of the upper back against a dark background.

Blackwork Back Sea turtle Lizard Spiral Tribal Polynesian

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The net had caught the big female across both wings, and she was turning slow circles in the shallows of the channel, her mouth opening and closing as if she were counting something. I waded in waist-deep with the knife Aunty Hine keeps for the bait lines, and the water was warm and tasted of rust.

Keep reading

Nobody on Toka teaches you to cut a manta free. You learn to sit still and let the thing understand that you are not the enemy. I hummed the tune Grandmother used when she pricked the lines of her own palm, the low tune with no words, and the wing eased under my hand. The mesh parted in long threads. Behind me on the sand a gecko ticked from the coconut trunk. It is the house spirit, which means the house is watching.

Grandmother had given me my first real design two winters before, tapped into the skin with a comb of bone and soot ink while rain drummed the roof. She had drawn the turtle first, the sea's own navigator, then the lizard above it to keep the turtle company, and last the ray that carries them both across the reef. When I asked why the ray was biggest, she said only that wings take more room than sense.

The manta rolled once and slid under the dark water, and I stood there with the knife and the cut net trailing from my fist. On the shore, Grandmother lifted her hand. It was the same gesture she used for the diamond point at the base of the design, the one she said closed the picture so the sea could not walk out of it.