Eagle Rays!

I've just had my first Eagle Ray sighting! Three of them, in fact. They are magnificent creatures. Will and Jan (the two TCI interns) and I went out for a short snorkel just to look for them (sadly, Jessee was busy with the students). The Eagle Rays often spend time around Shark Alley, and Jan goes over there almost daily looking for them for her research. I saw two at first swimming side-by-side and tried to get the others' attention (it's rather difficult to do that when one's head is underwater). Afraid that I was going to miss my first opportunity to see them up close, I turned and chased after them on my own. Moments later, a third Ray joined the first two. I followed them quite a while and got a bit of (very shaky) footage.

You'll see in the video that they are very graceful and, despite how it might look, they're moving really fast. I couldn't really keep up with them. Luckily they weren't going straight away from me, but rather, were circling around a large arc, so I was able to keep a distant eye on them. They're pretty docile, so I would have liked to have been a lot closer. Because of the distance they were at, the video is quite blue, and because of how hard I had to kick to keep up with them, it's very shaky. If you can't tell, these particular Eagle Rays have a wingspan of about 4 feet.


Eagle Rays
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIq3aJvoeJs)

After following them for several minutes, I noticed a barracuda getting agitated that I was in it's territory. I kept my camera on the Eagle Rays (the best I could) and my eyes on the pesky fish. The second video (below) is when I decided the barracuda had gotten much too close and abandoned my pursuit of the Eagle Rays. The video looks a bit like I'm being attacked, but rest assured, I'm fully intact. Their quite nasty little things (or, rather, quite nasty not-so-little things).


Fleeing a Barracuda
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-fzggeDf-Q)

Eagle Rays are beautiful, as you can see below in the photographs I pulled off of wikipedia. They've got a white underbelly and black back with distinct patterns. Jan is working to identify the population at Shark Alley using these patterns, as they are a bit like human finger prints. There's very little known about Eagle Ray behaviour. One thing that is known, however, is that they are ovoviviparous, which means that they carry their fertilized eggs until they are ready to hatch. Eagle Rays give birth to live young! Unlike mammals, however, the embryo is nourished by the egg yolk instead of the mother. Eagle Ray mothers also don't care for their young. When they are born, the baby Eagle Rays must fair on their own. I can only imagine that their little wings must be all folded up inside the womb.