After a few more passes, Meredith had gotten used to the stingrays and was feeding them and petting them like a seasoned pro! The creatures are so big and heavy (they must easily weigh 100+ lbs!) it takes a while to figure out how to feed them without getting knocked over when they get friendly and swim into you!
Which is exactly what happened to me! Our divemaster had warned us that the suction was so strong that if we accidentally got our fingers sucked into the mouth, that we wouldn't be able to get them out! He then explained that if this should happen, you should just relax and that after a few seconds, the stingray would realize our fingers were non-edible and would stop the suction and then you can get your fingers out.
This is exactly what happened to me! Except that when my finger got sucked in, I felt his grindplates grind on my finger, thought "HOLY FUCK! This one's got TEETH!" and then panicked and ripped my hand out of it's mouth as hard as I could! The cut you see on my hand is from where the suction pulled the skin right off my finger! Crazy, right?
Here's a closer view! On the boat, our divemaster explained to us that stingrays don't have teeth - instead they have two cartilaginous "grind plates" that they use to chew their food. When they smell something good, they can generate a ton of suction and they use it to suck the food up into their mouth!
...you can stick out a finger or thumb and put it on their nose and lead them around. It's really funny. You can go around and and around and the stingray will stick right with your hand because it knows you've got some squid in there. Then, when you're ready, you open your hand as quick as you can and hold your hand flat so that when the stingray turns on the super-suction, your fingers don't get sucked up along with the squid!
It was a little scary, but I realized that it was totally my mistake and that the little guy hadn't meant to get a chunk of manflesh. He even came back over to say hi...
The stingray's eyes are on top and it's mouth is all the way underneath. See his happy lil' muppet mouth peeking out? It totally looks like he's smiling!
The rays showed up only a few minutes after we'd arrived on the bottom! Seeing them glide in together is one of the most memorable things I've ever seen. They're graceful and beautiful, but at the same time they're really alien and evil-looking and they have a stinger under their tail that can kill a person!
But at the same time, they were clearly playful and interested in being fed - so I was able to swallow my fear and relax. (This was dive was on August 23rd. Just eleven days later Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray in a freak accident!)
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