I'm not sure which species these rays are. Nor why they were jumping. And jumping they were. All week long we would see them swimming in schools just under the surface and for no discernible reason they would jump out of the water. Apparently no one else is really sure either, as noted on this site, which also mentions the difficulty of species identification.
These images were difficult to capture as I was rather far from the action, shooting early in the morning in dim light, and had to get lucky for a ray to jump where I had the camera aimed. I got a lot of splash images before I just aimed in the direction of the last leap and waited. It was very cool to watch through binoculars as the school swam by.
4 comments:
I bet this was fun, and you captured some great images of the "jumps"! Fun and what a find!
Only time I have seen that is when they are being chased, but I have seen them repeatedly beat one wing or the other on the surface then sweep in to vacuum up the small shrimp and krill that they had stunned, Even had a Manta once drive prawns towards me and scoop them up as they fled from me, really keen to be about three feet from that action and in the water. Not Dumb beasties those things.
Wow! That is really interesting. Bet nobody else gets jumping rays for this theme!
That's really cool!
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