Dunk Island (Qld.); Natural history -- Australia -- Dunk Island (Qld.)
Ox-rays (UROGYMNUS ASPERRIMUS) grow to a great size, their backs being so
armoured with thick-set stellate bucklers on a horn-like skin, that to
secure them a heavy-hefted weapon and a strong right arm are necessary.
But among the largest of the family is that known as the devil fish
(MOBULA sp.), which, upon being harpooned, sinks placidly to the bottom,
and adhering thereto by suction, defies all ordinary attempts to raise
it. This often basks in calm water or swims slowly close to the surface,
when the pliant tips of its "wings," appearing at regular intervals
above the surface, create the illusion of a couple of large sharks moving
along in rhythmic regularity as to speed and muscular movement. Rarely,
and apparently only by mischance, does a ray take bait; but when hooked
it affords good sport, for its impassive resistance is incomprehensibly
great in comparison with its size, and comparable to the pull of a green
turtle which in its wanderings has become foul-hooked.
An exciting coursing match entertained me not long since, not only as an
exhibition of wonderful speed and agility, but because of the wit with
which the weaker creature eluded pursuit. Three hundred yards from the
beach the dorsal fin of a huge hammer-head shark obtruded about two feet
as it leisurely quartered a favourite hunting-ground. A sudden swirl and
splash indicated that game had been sighted, and the next instant an
eagle or flying ray (STOASODON NARINARI) leaped out of the sea with
prodigious eagerness to reach the beach. In a series of abrupt curves the
shark endeavoured to head off the ray, which, as its pursuer gained on
it, shot out of the water over the shoulders of the shark, each leap
being at least ten feet high. In rising it seemed to switch the shark
with its thong-like tail, although apparently in almost despairing fright.
After at least a dozen agile and desperate efforts, each timed to just
elude the rush of the shark, both came into shallow water in which the
quick and regular contours of the shark stirred the mud in a wavy
pattern; it became baffled, and in a few seconds the ray slowly, and with
infinite caution, "flew" (and that is the correct term to apply to a fish
the movements of which in the water are analogous to the flight of a
bird) into such meagre depths that the shark would have been stranded had
it followed. No ripple indicated its discreet course within a few feet of
the water line and it maintained its way for about two hundred yards
parallel with the beach, while the shark furiously quartered the sea off
shore.
On the occasion of a similar hunt a ray blundered fatally because of the
steeper incline of the beach. When about ten feet off the shore instead of
a lateral it took a directly forward "flight," landing six feet up on
the dry sand, where it fell an easy victim to a black boy, perhaps not as
hungry or as ferocious as the shark, but equally partial to rays as food
and incapable of any self-denying act.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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