Welcome to Contact Cove. The rays in this display are cownose rays, blue spotted maskrays and whiptails.
Rays are closely related to sharks. Did you know the only bones in a ray's body are the ones they eat? Their skeleton is made up of flexible cartilage (the bendy stuff that your ears and nose are made from!)
Stingrays use electromagnetic senses to search for food. Special pits across the front of their face allow them to pick up electrical signals from other animals when they move.
Stingrays protect themselves with venomous barbs in their tail. At the aquarium, we periodically clip the barbs off like fingernails so they can’t accidently harm someone.
Sadly, the number of rays are in decline and they are classified as a Threatened Species. Overfishing, habitat loss and climate change are the major threats to rays. We must do what we can to protect them!
Feel free to touch the rays using the gentle two-finger touch method. You can hand feed them by purchasing food from our bait shack.
BABY EPAULETTE SHARKS
Try to spot the baby epaulette sharks in this display. Since they are still quite young, they love to hide in crevices and usually just come out to eat. Unlike most sharks, the epaulette has the ability to uses its fins as legs to "walk" over reefs to look for prey. In addition, the epaulette shark can remain out of water for long periods of time! It can actually survive 60 times longer without oxygen than humans! In order to do this, the little shark slows its breathing and heart rate and powers down its brain.
This species gets its name from the very large, black spot behind each pectoral fin, which are reminiscent of military epaulettes. These markings can be confusing for predators as they look like a large eye.
These young epaulette sharks hatched here at the aquarium in Fall 2019 from egg casings called mermaid purses. As with most sharks, they have very low reproductive rates and are vulnerable to population decline from habitat loss and climate change.
BAMBOO SHARKS
The Whitespotted Bamboo Sharks are small carpet shark that grows to about 3 feet long.
They are nocturnal predators and at night they will scour the bottom for food, sucking in what they find. Like other sharks, they also have electroreceptors along their snout to help them locate prey that is buried in the sand and mud. They have small mouths, but powerful jaws.
