Stingrays wash up on beach
More than a dozen dead stingrays have mysteriously washed up on an Auckland beach.
Beachgoers were shocked to find more than 15 large stingrays scattered along St Heliers yesterday afternoon.
The stingrays appeared uninjured apart from a few lesions caused by seagulls pecking at their flesh.
“[Everyone] was pretty shocked to see so many dead, so many wasted.” Holger Boehm
St Heliers resident Holger Boehm went down to the beach with his son after hearing about the dead stingrays.
He said the wingspan of the rays was about 90cm.
“It was a sad picture seeing all of the dead animals,” he said.
“[Everyone] was pretty shocked to see so many dead, so many wasted.”
Boehm said he had never seen anything like it in the six years he had lived in St Heliers.
“I saw one that had relatively deep lacerations around its head but that may have been from the seagulls.”
Department of Conservation shark expert Clinton Duffy said it was “very common” for stingrays to get accidentally caught in fishermen’s nets.
“My guess is they have been discarded from fishing.”
Duffy said stingrays fed intertidally, which meant they didn’t get caught out by the tide.