Stingray enjoys a hand fed meal

Stingray City is a series of shallow sandbars found in the North Sound of Grand Cayman Island. It is a tourist attraction, where southern stingrays are found in abundance and visitors can pet and interact with the animals. The tours here are very regulated to keep the animals safe with such a great amount of human interaction. The southern stingray seen here has a flat, diamond-shaped disc, with a mud brown, olive, and grey dorsal surface and white underbelly. The barb on its tail is serrated and covered in a venomous mucous, used for self-defense. With such great interaction here, many of these local rays have come to be very friendly and interactive with visitors. The stingrays eat mainly small fish, worms and crustaceans which is why they cruise the sea bed and sandy floor looking for a meal. Larger rays, produce an incredible amount of suction for gathering food and are capable of even sucking a conch snail right out of it’s shell. The day Brent and his wife and step daughter visited stingray city, was the day Brent got to experience just how these rays gather food. Once their tour arrived at the site, they were all given a background on the rays, how they feed and how to handle them. When feeding squid to the rays, which they love, everyone was instructed to “keep your thumb tucked inside your fingers “ saving you from having your thumb sucked between the hard bony serrated plates they use for grinding food. Another thing Brent forgot, as you will see. After a short instruction from Britney, one of the guides, Brent was game to feed, and cuddle with one of these amazing animals. After a little kiss on the nose of the stingray for good luck, Brent clasped the squid in his hand and made the offering. “ It was a very cool experience “ Brent mentioned. “ They sure do have a lot of suction”.