Researchers Take the Sting Out of Area Stingrays

The little stingers weren’t so tough after inquisitive budding scientists from Cal State Long Beach gave them pedicures.

About 50 stingrays along the Seal Beach coast got their stingers clipped on their own surf Wednesday, just days after a higher than normal number of weekend beach goers were jabbed by the stealthy fish.

The clipping was performed by biologists and students who are studying the stingrays’ migration patterns. Their work comes at a time when local lifeguards are seeing a steady rise in the number of ray stings at some beaches.

Removing the one-inch barbs, which pack a painful wallop for humans, helps the university’s research and makes the beaches safer, said Chris Lowe, a Cal State Long Beach biology professor. Since March, the researchers have captured, tagged and clipped the stingers once every two weeks.

On Wednesday morning, a 200-foot net was dragged through the water, said Ross Pounds, a Seal Beach lifeguard. After the rays were caught, the team dragged them onto shore, where they were placed in plastic pools. A device inside the pools created bubbles, so the rays could breathe.

Using clippers designed for a dog’s claws, researchers snapped the rays’ stingers off. It’s not easy work; two students have been stung by rays, Lowe said.

Seal Beach has always been a favorite haunt of these normally passive bottom dwellers, so much so that it has been nicknamed “Ray Bay.” Some people speculate it’s because of the California Edison electric plant, just inland from the San Gabriel River’s mouth. The plant helps create warmer waters--a stingray favorite, Pounds said.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, about 20 people at Seal Beach were stung by the rays, he said. Pounds said the last three to four years have seen progressively higher numbers of stingray incidents.

“Over the last few years, we’ve had jumps of about 70 to 80 more stings per year,” Pounds said. Seal Beach lifeguards normally treat about 400 people for stingray punctures a year, he said.

Victims report that stings make their legs or feet feel as if they are on fire, lifeguards say.

People who think they’ve been stung by a ray should submerge the puncture “in as hot a water as they can stand,” said Brian O’Rourke, a Newport Beach lifeguard. They should approach the nearest lifeguard station, or restaurant--any place where they can get access to hot water and a bucket, he said.

“In Corona del Mar, we’ve had 10 to 15 people with their foot in a bucket of hot water at once,” O’Rourke said.

Many surfers and fishermen kill rays when they see them, Lowe said. He said he hopes studying these animals will help the city of Seal Beach find a nonlethal way to make beach goers and rays coexist.

“These animals appear to move on shore at certain times, under certain conditions,” Lowe said. “When people get stung, it tends to happen in bunches. By isolating cues that tell us when they’re going to be on shore, we can increase public safety, and also protect the rays.”

A concern expressed to scientists, lifeguards and city officials involved in the Seal Beach effort has been that clipping the rays’ stingers deprives them of their defense mechanism. However, Lowe said the stingrays have hardly any natural predators in the area.

O’Rourke said that when it comes to nasty pokes, stingrays aren’t the only culprits. There are jellyfish, whose sting is reportedly less painful, and a lesser known animal: the sculpin fish. Usually reeled in by accident, the sculpin fish has spines on its fins that can cause stings that are about as painful as a stingray’s, O’Rourke said.

“Most of the victims are fishermen near piers,” he said.