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Stingray Touch & Feeding
STINGRAY INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE
STINGRAY TOUCH
Connect with our friendly rays with this one-of-a-kind, hands-on experience. Using our 2-finger method, our staff will show you how to reach out and gently touch the back and 'wings' of these majestic creatures as they glide through their habitat.
STING RAY FEEDINGS
Our most popular attraction! Get up close and feed our flappy friends. Hold a small piece of food between your knuckles and lower your hand into the water and our curious stingrays will swim over and slurp up their snack out of your hand.
10 g food cups are $5 and available daily while supplies last
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Stingray Fun Facts
Rays are closely related to sharks. The only bones in a ray's body are the ones they eat! Their skeleton is made up of flexible cartilage (the bendy stuff that your ears and nose are made from!)
Stingrays also use electromagnetic senses to search for food. Special pits across the front of their face allow them to pick up electrical signals from other animals when they move.
Large groups of rays are known as a fever.
Fossil records date stingrays back to the Jurassic period, 150 million years ago!
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Sadly, the numbers of rays are in decline and they are classified as a Threatened Species. Overfishing, habitat loss and climate change are the major threats to rays. We must do what we can to protect them!
Frequently Asked Questions
What type of rays do you have?
We currently have atlantic stingrays, blue spotted mask rays, reticulated rays and cownose rays
Why don't the stingrays sting?
Stingrays have sharp barbs located on their tails, are used as a defense mechanism in the wild. We trim their barbs regularly (like fingernails), so they are safe to touch and cannot harm their handlers.
What do you feed the rays?
Our rays enjoy a diet of shrimp, clams and fish
Why are feedings sometimes unavailable?
Our husbandry staff measures out the proper amount of food each day for public feedings, so the rays do not overeat. On busy days we can go through this food pretty quickly. We also give the rays a break from human interaction half way through the day to make sure they are not experiencing any stress.
Do the stingrays mate?
We see a lot of breeding activity with our Cownose and Blue Spotted Mask Rays. Our goal is to manage this breeding to ensure that there is the appropriate genetic diversity in the group. We purposefully trade animals with other aquariums who have the same species breeding, and swap animals for genetic diversity. ​
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Females give birth to live pups that hatch from egg cases inside the uterus. Baby rays are too small to be hand-fed by the public and are kept in our nursery, where our husbandry staff feeds the baby rays tiny portions, multiple times a day so they can monitor their intake.
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