First, I'm a FW guy, so hopefully this is a good place to share...
So, I'm on vacation in Panama City Beach, Florida. We're up on the 17th floor with a room that overlooks the Gulf of Mexico. I looked out this evening and saw some black dots moving around in the water. I got my binoculars out and the dots turned out to be stingrays. There were about 15 of them. I have seen stingrays before, but I saw some interesting behavior that I had not seen before:
They seem to either "go solo" or swim around in groups of 3 or 4 - in a tight formation. I did not realize that they were a social fish. After watching them, it's clear that they are.
They like to body surf. This was probably the coolest thing I've seen in a while. The rays would swim out a bit, and turn around and start swimming to shore. When a wave would come up behind them, they appeared to come up almost to the surface and ride the wave like a surf board. They did this over and over and over again.
After seeing the surfing, I saw a commotion. About 10 of them were in a disorganized formation - then I saw in front of them some kind of long, eel like thing frantically trying to get away from the rays. The "eel" cruised around for a long time before figuring out how to swim back out to the ocean. I wish I could have seen the "eel" better, but my binocolars are only 12X and I'm pretty far away.
I got a bunch of pictures of the rays with my telephoto lens, but it isn't quite a good as my binoculars. I'm stuck with connecting to the internet via my edge connection, and the upload speed really bites. I'll post some when I get over to Panera Bread to get some real bandwidth.
So, I'm on vacation in Panama City Beach, Florida. We're up on the 17th floor with a room that overlooks the Gulf of Mexico. I looked out this evening and saw some black dots moving around in the water. I got my binoculars out and the dots turned out to be stingrays. There were about 15 of them. I have seen stingrays before, but I saw some interesting behavior that I had not seen before:
They seem to either "go solo" or swim around in groups of 3 or 4 - in a tight formation. I did not realize that they were a social fish. After watching them, it's clear that they are.
They like to body surf. This was probably the coolest thing I've seen in a while. The rays would swim out a bit, and turn around and start swimming to shore. When a wave would come up behind them, they appeared to come up almost to the surface and ride the wave like a surf board. They did this over and over and over again.
After seeing the surfing, I saw a commotion. About 10 of them were in a disorganized formation - then I saw in front of them some kind of long, eel like thing frantically trying to get away from the rays. The "eel" cruised around for a long time before figuring out how to swim back out to the ocean. I wish I could have seen the "eel" better, but my binocolars are only 12X and I'm pretty far away.
I got a bunch of pictures of the rays with my telephoto lens, but it isn't quite a good as my binoculars. I'm stuck with connecting to the internet via my edge connection, and the upload speed really bites. I'll post some when I get over to Panera Bread to get some real bandwidth.
