Monday, July 14, 2025

This Stinks

Annap Cap Gazette, Over 100 dead cownose rays create stench in northern Anne Arundel waters

More than 100 cownose rays died in the waters off the shores of northern Anne Arundel County near Glen Burnie in recent weeks, creating an odor residents say deterred them from leaving their homes.

First reported by WBAL-TV, residents around Marley and Furnace creeks said they dealt with the stench of decaying rays for days. They described the smell as so powerful that they couldn’t go swimming, fishing or out to enjoy their piers.

“It was so bad, the smell was so horrific, you couldn’t even come out of your house,” Dale Lott, of Point Pleasant, told WBAL-TV. “They had all these cownose stingrays that were just dead.”

 

The cownose ray is a brown, kite-shaped ray with a long tail, according to the Chesapeake Bay Program. The rays migrate along the Atlantic Coast and visit the Chesapeake Bay during the summer months to mate and give birth in the shallow water.

The first die-off — of about 80 rays — was on June 20, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment. Last week, another 50 to 150 rays died in Marley Creek and Furnace Creek, located in the Glen Burnie area.

Experts with the Department of the Environment say the likely cause of death was overcrowding.


“Cownose rays travel in schools that can number in the thousands, and they are typically seen in open waters such as the mainstem of the Chesapeake Bay or the mouth of bay tributaries,” Maryland Department of the Environment spokesperson Jay Apperson said in an email Friday. “The most likely cause of these die-offs is overcrowding of rays wandering into smaller bodies of water that do not provide sufficient dissolved oxygen.”

The Maryland Department of the Environment said its crews are collecting water samples to check on water quality and they do not believe the die-off is ongoing.

I'm well acquainted with the smell. Every summer a few wash up on our beach, and stink up a hundred yards or so. Imagine dead fish combined with mucking out a stable. The smell has a unique ammonia odor caused by the decay of the urea that sharks and rays use to balance their osmotic pressure to the salt.  

The Wombat has Rule Five SundayMonday: Belated Bikini a day late, and no FMJRA at all, but who's counting?

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