A school of stingrays this large is referred to as a ‘fever’, and now that you know that I feel like I’ve done my good deed for the day and taught at least one of you something new. With that random trivia fact in the rearview mirror we can now move on and begin discussing how simultaneously trippy and terrifying this sight might be for some people.
Here’s the captured footage:
Huge group of stingrays (or technically a "fever" of stingrays) captured swimming near #Tampa (via @FOX13News) 😳 pic.twitter.com/pq3I3DGY4h
— FOX 11 Los Angeles (@FOXLA) June 16, 2016
Here’s a quick video explaining it:
True story, I was fortunate enough to see a spectacle exactly like this when I was about 12 or 13 years old and on a staycation with my family down in Sanibel Island, Florida, just a quick drive from where I grew up. I went parasailing for my first time and while I was suspended up in the air I saw a school just like this, only in my childhood memory it was significantly larger, we’re talking like tens of thousands of these spotted stingrays in every direction. It was one of the single coolest sights I’ve ever seen in my entire life. But when you’re parasailing there is typically another person up there with you, you usually go in tandem, and I remember the friend that was with me was totally pissing his pants the entire time thinking he was somehow in some sort of immediate danger (spoiler alert: he was not).
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So I totally get why seeing a fever of stingrays could freak a lot of people out even if it poses zero danger to human beings whatsoever, it’s just an other worldly sight you don’t expect to see. Back to the parasailing story though, the part of the trip that actually scared the shit out of my pants was when the boat stopped to let the parachute fall and dip us in the water. At the time we went parasailing there was a local shark fishing tournament happening, so we saw A TON of sharks while we were up in the air because the water was filled with blood and chum for miles in each direction. Well when the boat stopped to dip me and my buddy Danny in the water they just so happened to drop us about 30-feet from an 8-foot lemon shark and the second we hit the water that shark made a direct line for us…only to puss out and realize that we were people, not fish, but it still scared the ever living shit out of me at the time.
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(h/t FOX LA)