Workers rescue pregnant stingray in labor after washing up on shoreline
The Public Works Crew brought in a front loader. The Superintendent told CBS News Philadelphia the workers quickly realized the stingray was in labor
By Ryan Hughes
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VENTNOR CITY, New Jersey (KYW) — Barbara Maurer says sitting under the Ventnor Fishing Pier is her happy place.
“I usually go to the beach about three or four times a week, and I go early in the morning,” said Maurer, who lives in Galloway Township.
On Tuesday, Maurer spotted something on the shoreline that caught her attention, and she knew it needed help.
“I was walking along the beach and I seen this beautiful stingray, one of the biggest ones I’ve ever seen,” she said.
Maurer says she couldn’t move the ray herself so she tracked down a group of workers with Ventnor City Public Works Department.
“I could tell the stingray was alive because I saw its eyes moving and its tail occasionally move,” Maurer said.
The Public Works Crew brought in a front loader. The Superintendent told CBS News Philadelphia the workers quickly realized the stingray was in labor, so they carefully moved the sand underneath the ray about an inch or two at a time until they reached a point where the water was deep enough for the stingray to swim away.
“We should not be surprised to see that kind of ray around here but we should be surprised to see it up on the beach like that,” said Thomas Grothues, the Director of the Rutgers University Marine Field Station.
Grothues believes it was an Atlantic stingray, which weigh about 40-50 pounds. He said stingrays usually have one to four babies at a time.
“What’s unusual here is that the ray is out of the water so it’s probably stressed, so even if it wasn’t quite ready to give birth it would do that,” he said.
The stingray was successfully released into the wild, and Grothues said the mom and her babies have a good chance of survival.
“Those guys were heroes in my book because if you can save a life whether it be an animal, a person, a sea creature, they’re heroes,” Maurer said.
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