Newby Diver | "Dude, we saw three of the hugest stingrays! It was so cool. They were like six feet across!" |
Old Timer | "Six feet across? Those weren't stingrays." |
Nearly Newby Diver | "No, man, those weren't stingrays. They were butterfly rays!" |
Old Timer | "Six foot butterfly rays? Wow. Were they like this thick?" [holding thumb and forefinger a half inch apart] |
Nearly Newby Diver | "No, they were much thicker." |
Old Timer | "Did they have really distinctive faces? And were they about this thick?" [holding hands 8 -12 inches apart] |
Nearly Newby Diver | "Yeah, that's it!" |
Old Timer | "Those were bat rays." |
The above was an actual conversation at La Jolla Shores. I remember quite clearly, when I first learned to dive and had no clue what anything out in the ocean was, swimming a VERY wide path around a 7 foot halibut, thinking that it was the world's biggest stingray and that it might attack me. All I knew was that there were these flat things out there which could hurt me, and here was a really big flat thing... |