August 30, 2018 — Chesapeake Bay watermen have long viewed the cownose ray as a pest, preying on a vulnerable oyster population. Their contempt even inspired tournaments of bow-wielding ray hunters — a practice the state has banned, at least temporarily.
But new research backs up concerns that the winged creatures could themselves be susceptible to overfishing, an outcome that some scientists fear could harm the bay’s health.
Scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md., tracked a group of rays over two years. The rays, they found in research published last week in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series, spend their winters around Cape Canaveral, Fla., then migrate north in the spring to the same rivers where researchers initially found them — perhaps the rivers and creeks where they were born.
The finding could be valuable as Maryland fishery regulators develop the state’s first plan to manage the cownose ray population, balancing the concerns of the seafood industry with the limited data available on the rays’ place in the Chesapeake ecosystem.