RAYS

The oceans are full of rays of all kinds, colors, shapes, and sizes. All are “cousins” of the sharks, in that they're technically elasmobranchs. That means that their bodies are structured not with bones but with cartilage. They include everything from sawfishes to guitarfishes to manta rays, eagle rays, and stingrays. Except for the most bizarre of accidental circumstances, they're harmless to humans.

But what about stingrays? I hear you yowling. They have stingers, don't they? They can sting you, can't they?

Yes, they can, if you step on them. But so can bees. And a bald eagle can claw your eyes out, and a German shepherd can rip your throat out, and a raccoon can give you rabies. But the chances are, they won't.

Anyone who needs convincing of the gentleness of stingrays need travel no farther than the Cayman Islands. Local dive groups there have established a dive site called Stingray City in the sand flats off Grand Cayman. Stingrays gather there in numbers far too large to count, and they wait patiently for the boats that arrive daily with divers and food. The rays swim up to you, under your arms, between your legs, and around your head. They envelop you with wings as soft as satin. They feed from your hand, and if you have nothing for them, they move on to someone else. (Even stingrays can make mistakes, however. A few years ago, one mistook my son-in-law's wrist for a tender morsel and actually bit him. The hard cartilaginous plates in the ray's mouth caused a nasty bruise but didn't break the skin.)

It's very tempting to anthropomorphize stingrays. Not only do they behave calmly and comfortably around humans, but when seen from underneath, they can even look humanoid, if you'll let your imagination ramble a bit. The nostrils look like eyes, the mouth is a mouth, and the point of the head can become a nose, and … well, you have to be there.

Twenty years ago I had an experience with a ray that changed my life. Literally. I hurried home and wrote a book about it— The Girl of the Sea of Cortez. It altered forever my perception of animals, people, the sea, and the interconnectedness of everything on earth.

I was in the Sea of Cortez, doing an American Sportsman segment on hammerhead sharks. For reasons no one has ever been able to explain, hammerheads gather there periodically in huge, peaceful schools of hundreds, perhaps thousands, at a time. The gatherings seem to have nothing to do with either breeding or feeding. The hammerheads are simply there, in crowds so thick that seen from below, they block the sun.

The underwater cameramen on the shoot were old friends, Stan Waterman and Howard Hall. Howard's wife, Michele, who's now a producer, director, and partner in Howard's film company, was along as both nurse and still photographer.

One afternoon we returned to our chartered boat, the Don Jose, full of macho tales of death-defying diving among the sea monsters. We were interrupted by a very excited Michele, who directed us to look beneath the boat.

There, basking in the boat's cool shadow, was the largest manta ray any of us had ever seen. (We'd soon learn that it measured eighteen feet from wingtip to wingtip. At the moment, all we knew was that it looked as big as an F-16.) A manta has fins near its head that unfurl during feeding and become supple sweeps to gather food into its immense mouth. Now they were rolled up tightly, and they looked exactly like horns—thus, the manta's age-old traditional name, devilfish.

For centuries the manta was one of the most terrifying animals in the sea. It is huge, horned, and winged, with a mouth big enough to swallow a person whole. It also has a habit of leaping clear out of the water, turning somersaults, and slamming down upon the surface of the sea. Obviously it's daring any foolish sailor to fall overboard into its ghastly grasp. Equally obviously, such hideous monsters deserved no fate better than death. Spearing mantas used to be a popular sport among the few, the bold, and the brave.

In fact, mantas are harmless. They eat only plankton and other microscopic sea life. They breach (soar out of the water) for reasons no one knows for certain. They probably do it to rid themselves of parasites but possibly, as I prefer to believe, do it just for the fun of it. Usually, they avoid people, swimming— flying seems more accurate—slowly away from approaching divers.

Sometimes, however, they seem to seek the company of people, like the manta that now rested peacefully beneath our boat. Before any of us could ask, Michele told us how she had discovered the magnificent creature.

The air temperature was well above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The Don Jose was not air-conditioned. To keep bearably cool, Michele went overboard frequently. On one of her plunges she had seen the enormous ray hovering motionless beneath the boat. She swam toward it. It didn't move. As she drew near, she saw that the animal was injured. Where one wing joined the body there was a tear in the flesh, and the wound was full of rope. Michele supposed that the manta had swum blindly into one of the countless nets set by fishermen all over the Sea of Cortez. In struggling to free itself, which it had accomplished not with teeth (they have none) but with sheer strength, it had torn its wing and carried pieces of the broken net away with it.

Michele kept expecting the manta to ease away from her as she approached. But by now she was almost on top of it and still it hadn't moved. She was, however, out of breath. She decided to return to the boat and put on scuba gear.

The manta was still there when she returned. This time she was emitting noisy streams of bubbles, and she knew that the manta would probably flee from them.

It didn't.

Slowly, she let herself fall gently down until she was sitting on the manta's back.

Still it didn't move.

Michele reached forward and, very gingerly, pulled strand after strand of thick rope netting out of the ragged wound. She had no idea how— or even if—rays experience pain. But if they did, she thought, this had to hurt.

The manta lay perfectly still.

When all the rope was gone, Michele carefully packed the shreds of torn flesh together and pressed them into the cavity in the wing. She covered the wound with her hands. Now the manta came to life. Very slowly it raised its wings and brought them down again. Very slowly the great body began to move forward, not with enough speed to throw Michele off its back but with an easy, casual pace that let her ride comfortably along. To steady herself Michele put one hand on the manta's six-foot-wide upper lip. Off they went, with Michele's heart pounding in her chest, happiness filling her heart, amazement and delight flooding her mind.

The boat was anchored on a sea mount, an underwater mountain whose peak extended to within a hundred feet of the surface. With unimaginable grace the manta took Michele on a flying tour of the entire mountaintop. Down it flew to the edge of darkness, then up again to the surface light.

Michele didn't know how long the ride lasted—fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour. But eventually the manta returned to its station in the shadow of the boat and stopped. Michele let go and came to the surface. She was thrilled beyond words, but she thought we would never believe her. Surely by the time we came back, the manta would have long since returned to its home range, wherever that might be.

But it hadn't. It was still there, still resting in the cool, still apparently—impossibly!—willing to have more contact with humans.

We decided to try to capture the manta on film. We knew we couldn't duplicate Michele's experience. But even if we could get some shots of the great ray flying away with a human being in the same frame to give a sense of its size, we'd have some very special film.

Howard and Stan filmed the ray itself from every possible angle. Then they signaled for me to descend, as Michele had, and attempt to land gently on the manta's back. I had done my best to neutralize my buoyancy so that, once submerged, my 180 pounds would weigh nothing. Now I used my hands like little fins to guide me down upon the animal as lightly as a butterfly.

As soon as the manta felt my presence on its back, it started forward. It flew very slowly at first, but soon its wings fell into a long, graceful sweep. It was flying so fast that I—in order to stay aboard—had to grip its upper lip with one hand and a wing with the other and lie flat against its back. My mask was mashed against my face, we were going so fast. My hair was plastered back so hard that on film I look bald.

I felt like a fighter pilot—no, not a pilot, for I had no control over this craft. It was more like being a passenger in a fighter plane. Down we flew, and banked around the sea mount, and soared again. We passed turtles that didn't give us a passing glance and hammerheads that (I swear) did a double take as they saw us go by.

The world grew dark, and for a moment I was afraid. I knew we had gone very deep, but I had no way of knowing exactly how deep because I couldn't let go with one hand to reach for my depth gauge. If we're too deep, I worried, I'll run out of air, or get the bends on surfacing, or—

Just then, as if to reassure me, the manta returned to the world of light. It rushed for the surface, gaining speed with every thrust of its mighty wings. I had the sudden, terrifying conviction that it was going to burst through the surface and take to the air—and me with it. When we slammed down again on the water I would be reduced to pudding. But long before it reached the surface, the manta swerved away and began to cruise twenty or thirty feet below the boat.

Finally, it slowed, then silently stopped directly in the shadow of the boat. I let go and made my way to the surface.

Like Michele, I didn't know how long my journey had lasted, and there was no way to find out. My air tank was almost empty. Stan and Howard had each run through a full load of film, which meant that I had been underwater on that magical ride for at least twenty minutes. But how deep, and for how long, at what depth? The only way I would know how much nitrogen—the villain that brings on bends—was left in my system was to wait. If I came down with the agony of the bends, in my joints or my guts, I'd know I had gone too deep for too long. If I didn't, I'd know I hadn't. Simple as that.

The manta, meanwhile, stayed beneath the boat. Over the next three days, every member of the crew had a chance to swim with or ride on the manta. Always, without exception, the wonderful ray returned its passengers to the same exact spot beneath the boat.

As soon as I returned home, I began to write. A story had been born, entire, in my head. I wrote it at record speed (for me) and with thoughts, feelings, and perceptions I didn't know I had.

It was published as the novel The Girl of the Sea of Cortez. Though it's now out of print, I'm delighted that readers are still discovering it, for it is my favorite of all my books about the sea.

Though the book still clings to life, I'm sorry to report that the magical manta rays of the Sea of Cortez do not. Too many fishermen lost too many nets to the mantas. So they hunted them down until there were none left.