Stingray City
Grand Cayman
2013
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Stingray City is a series of shallow sandbars found in the North Sound of Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands.
It may be that stingrays began gathering in the area decades ago when fisherman returning from an excursion, navigated behind a reef into the sound, and cleaned their fish in the calm water of the shallows and sandbar area. The fish guts and squid were thrown overboard and the stingrays eventually gathered to eat the discarded guts. Soon the stingrays associated the sound of a boat engine with food. As this practice turned into a tradition, divers realized that the stingrays could be fed by hand.
Today, tour and excursion boats, along with private watercraft, gather at Stingray City in large numbers. Passengers enter the chest-high water to interact with the stingrays. The boat owners bring along with them pails of chunked-up squid meat, which they dispense by hand to the animals, thus attracting dozens of the creatures to the feeding spot.
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