200 stingrays wash up on North Carolina shore, officials say. What happened?
Dozens of stingrays washed onto the North Carolina coast as fishermen tried to get them back into the water, officials said.
An estimated 200 stingrays, some dead and some alive, were found near their fishing site Thursday, Nov. 14. It happened in the popular coastal destination of Atlantic Beach, a roughly 150-mile drive southeast from Raleigh, according to the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries.
“The stingrays had been caught in the stop net fishing operation,” spokesperson Patricia Smith told McClatchy News in an email. “The fishermen were releasing the stingrays, as they should, but some still washed ashore. The fishermen were also trying to get the stingrays out of the surf and back into the water.”
Stop net is a method of fishing that uses a net anchored to shore to round up schools of fish, which are then collected, according to N.C. State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The fishing company, which had been catching mullet, reported that it doesn’t usually have stingray bycatch.
“It likely caught them this year because the water temperatures are unseasonably warm,” Smith wrote. “No fishery violations were found, and no charges are pending.”
Stingrays are “commonly caught while bottom fishing for other species using natural bait.” The animals are flat, with a venomous “spine that is used for self-defense,” state officials wrote on their website.
Earlier this year, 51 sharks were found dead on a barrier island near Wilmington. The sharks had been bleeding from their mouths, and determining their cause of death was unlikely, the Division of Coastal Management told McClatchy News in September.
This story was originally published November 15, 2024 at 8:25 AM with the headline "200 stingrays wash up on North Carolina shore, officials say. What happened?."
