while their body is out and accessible to insert an acoustic transmitter. Four of those rays (three from Virginia and one from Georgia) returned to their original regions. While scientists have unraveled one mystery about cownose ray migrations, there are still many unknowns surrounding the animals. Scientists believe cownose ray migration is more influenced by … Of these rays, 28 had their signals detected multiple times over a period longer than 90 days, enough time for scientists to get a sense of their migratory behavior.Regardless of where scientists tagged the rays, every ray they detected in winter went to the same spot identified in Omori and Fisher’s earlier study: a region just off the coast of Cape Canaveral. 1. Do females remain until early October?6) Are there sex-specific differences in the timing or route of seasonal migrations south to wintering grounds?7) Do individuals return to the same areas in summer in multiples years?We hope to be able to answer our study questions with the help of passive acoustic telemetry. Previously, researchers knew little about cownose rays’ migration patterns. Most of the rays were tagged in Virginia at VIMS, with five in Maryland and two in Georgia. VIMS researchers help close the loop on cownose ray migration along the East Coast, completing the first study that followed the species for an entire year Catching cownose rays to tag can be a tricky business. Cownose ray pregnancies typically last a year and produce one pup. “The possibility of natal homing—where the rays return to the same area where they were born to reproduce—is so important for management purposes, as any harvesting of this species, if it’s concentrated in one area of the Bay, could easily diminish that population.”Ogburn, a marine biologist at SERC, says “If they’re really tied to one specific place, then you’ll be removing a whole piece, a whole unique segment, from the population.” “Because of the slow birth rate,” he adds, “we know that if we don’t manage them, and instead harvest them in a way that heavily impacts the population and causes a population decline, it’ll take a long time for them to recover. Due to the rapidly changing nature of the situation, we are not announcing a reopening date at this time and will provide updates on our website.The goal of this project is to increase understanding of the behavior and migration of individual cownose rays that reside in the Chesapeake Bay every spring and summer.
The greater challenge was figuring out if cownose rays go back to the same places each summer. A new study closes the loop on the annual migratory pathway of cownose rays along the U.S. East Coast, suggesting that mature animals likely return to the same nursery grounds in Chesapeake Bay and other East Coast estuaries each summer after overwintering in Atlantic coastal waters off central Florida.“Our study provides a more definitive and finer scale understanding of the rays’ migratory patterns,” says Fisher. VIMS researchers Bob Fisher, Kevin Weng, and an unidentified colleague release an acoustically tagged cownose ray into the York River near the VIMS campus in Gloucester Point. Cownose rays swim near the surface but have been seen at … The dark-colored rays … Currently there are over 200 receiver stations throughout the Chesapeake Bay and there are multiple receiver arrays on the Atlantic coasts from North Carolina to Florida; these will help us track individuals as they move about the Chesapeake Bay and then migrate along the US Atlantic Coast.This project is currently in its second year.
Some of the rays that were tagged last summer returned to the Chesapeake Bay this spring! The fifth spent both summers in the Chesapeake, but the first summer in Virginia and the second in Maryland. 3. The SERC campus remains temporarily closed to the public, including buildings, trails and other parts of the campus. As a public health precaution, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) is extending the cancelation or postponement of all public events, programs and gatherings until at least the end of the summer. Virginia Institute of Marine Science The cownose ray is a brown, kite-shaped ray with a long, whip-like tail.
This may be due to the drastic decline of populations of large predatory sharks as a result of over fishing along the US Atlantic coast. The cownose rays share space with southern stingrays, spotted eagle rays, and various small sharks in an 84,000-gallon tank. The decline in sharks means that top-town control of near-shore food webs has shifted to "mesopredators" (such as the cownose ray), which are predators that feed on bottom-dwelling prey. This ray was then picked up in May in the same location where it was originally tagged in the Chesapeake Bay. It is a highly migratory species along the Atlantic Coast that visits the Chesapeake Bay’s shallow waters in … In the Atlantic Ocean, its migration is northward in the late spring and southward in the late fall.
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