Black tribal-style manta ray tattoo with ornamental patterns and a curled tail, placed on a woman's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Tribal manta ray on upper back

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black manta ray with a long curled tail is set against the upper back, its wings filled with ornamental spirals, chevrons and swirling lines. The bold black fill contrasts with fine decorative linework inside the wings, and the design is shown from behind on bare skin. The image is in colour only in the skin tones and background, with no coloured ink.

Blackwork Back Spiral Chevron Swirl Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tide had turned before Tavi got the net clear of the coral, and by then the outrigger was drifting toward the gap in the reef where the water went dark and deep. Her uncle was shouting from the stern, though she could not hear the words over the slap of the hull. She cut the last knot with her teeth, the way he had taught her, and the net fell away like a shed skin.

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Something moved under the boat. At first it looked like a shadow the size of a sail, black against the pale sand, its edges rippling as though the sea were breathing through it. Then it rose, wings unfurling, and a long thin tail trailed behind it in a loose curl. Her uncle stopped shouting. Everyone on the island knew the old story about the ray that kept the reef gap open, and nobody had believed it since the year the lagoon went quiet.

The ray did not carry them anywhere. It simply turned, slow as a cloud, and pressed one wing against the outrigger's side until the hull lifted and slid clear of the broken coral. Tavi laid her palm on the wing as it passed. The skin was rough as a file and cut with patterns, spirals and zigzags, like the marks left by a hundred small currents running together.

When they reached the shallows the ray was gone, and the net lay coiled in the bottom of the boat, unbroken. Her uncle never mended it after that. He said it was better kept as it was, a net that had been given back.