This is Rosie. She is, her owner told me with a touch of resignation, stingray-spotting. “She doesn’t realise the season has ended.”
Well, I didn’t realise there was a season for rays either; but it was still very soothing to sit on the beach bench sipping my coffee and watch Rosie slowly prowling along. Not everyone knows we have rays of many sorts cruising our beaches, but I’ve seen them myself right up at the edge of the water, and been vaguely unnerved by the thought I could inadvertently stand on one. Apparently, though, our sole stingray fatality so far (human, not squashed fish) was back in 1938, so I can probably live with that. Literally. (Mind, an orca was stung to death here in 1998. Nasty.)
What was a bit disturbing though was being reminded of a marine tour I did in Tahiti, in the stunning Bora Bora lagoon. Part of the experience was the ‘stingray swim’, when we were expected to jump into the super-warm, super-clear water to interact with a cluster of rays that had been trained to come swarming up for a feed. They were big, and were all over us, smooth and rubbery - but we weren’t to be scared of stings, we were told, because they had been “de-stung”. That is, the barbs had been removed, and some of them had even had their tails chopped off, leaving just a stump. Horrible, eh? That was in 2016 - hopefully, they’re more enlightened now.
To finish on a pleasanter note, Rosie also reminded me of my first visit to the Cook Islands, where I was delighted to see, on Muri Beach, one of Rarotonga’s very many laid-back dogs doing exactly the same thing.
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