Stingray City Caymans - Operators Pull Out Barbs

After months of heated wrangling operators at Stingray City in the Cayman Islands have come to an agreement over site use protocols, tourism distribution, and animal care.

Just in time too, as the local situation by all accounts was getting to the point where police had to be called in to separate feuding operators. At dispute were price cuts, non regulated site drop ins, and animal stunts that had operators lifting animals out of the water, and feeding animals mouth to mouth.

This weeks final meeting was heated again, but the new rules and regulations agreed upon by the majority should be beneficial for all parties - including the stingrays.

Complete Report.

Image of the Week

This just in from a sharky blog reader. One word for this image...Wowza!

A stingray leaps out of the water as it is hunted by a killer whale, whose fin can be seen below the ray, just off St. Heliers beach in Auckland, New Zealand, Wednesday, June 24, 2009.

(AP Photo/New Zealand Herald Photograph, Brett Phibbs)

Elasmo Thai V.2

We blogged about this most unlikely of critters a few months ago. Now it seems record anglers with 60lb test lines are actively searching for the next trophy catch.

Unfortunately for these benign elasmos (sharks and rays) they lack big teeth, giant poison filled tail barbs, and a mean disposition.

The future for them is looking pretty grim as long as fishermen have no problems jumping into waters filled with Entamoeba histolytica:

Ian Welch and four colleagues spent 45 minutes battling the 6ft wide and 14ft long fish, which was too big to weigh but was estimated to be about 23 stones.

"When we got it to the surface I could not comprehend that something that size existed," said Mr Welch, 45, a doctor in freshwater biology, from Aldershot, Hants. "It was as big as a snooker table."

Giant Stingrays-Elasmo Thai

When this came across our desk this morning all we had to say was Holy Cra%@!

Yes this is what you think it is, and no this has not been photoshopped. Researchers and fishermen in Thailand landed a simply monster freshwater stingray-what they did with it after this photo finish is anyone's guess.

April 29, 2008—Recreational fishers and biologist Zeb Hogan (wearing cap) hold a live, 14-foot-long (4.3-meter-long) giant freshwater stingray the fishers caught in the Bang Pakong River in Chachoengsao, Thailand, on March 31, 2008.

After weeks of combing remote Southeast Asian rivers for giant freshwater stingrays—possibly the largest freshwater fish in the world—Hogan finally found the creature near a Thai city. To his surprise, she gave birth soon after capture. (Read full story.)

There are accounts of freshwater stingrays growing as large as 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms), which could make them the largest freshwater fish in the world, Hogan said. Hogan runs the National Geographic Society's Megafishes Project, an effort to document 20 or so freshwater giants.

The giant river rays are extremely difficult to catch, as they bury themselves in mud when hooked. They routinely break fishers' lines and bend finger-size hooks straight to escape capture.The ray's deadly barb, located at the base of its whiplike tail—and wrapped in a cloth in this picture—can easily puncture skin and bone.