Drone Footage Captures Massive Cownose Ray Fever Off Southampton, Pointing to Northward Migration Shift
Drone footage captured on August 7, 2026, by Hamptons-based professional drone pilot Joanna Steidle shows what she described as "thousands of cownose rays" gliding en masse near the surface off the coast of Southampton, on Long Island's South Fork. The video, taken approximately 125 yards from shore, appears to show hundreds of the rays swimming in a formation known colloquially as a "fever." The Guardian
Steidle, whose Instagram bio describes her as an "Ocean, Earth & Drone Lover in the Hamptons" and who photographs whales, sharks, rays, dolphins, and menhaden as part of her wildlife conservation work in New York, has documented cownose rays in the area before. A 2023 post showed a fever of rays floating alongside a school of menhaden off Southampton. Her top-down drone capture of rays dividing a menhaden school, taken off Southampton on August 21 of a prior year, is sold through her website. This latest footage, however, drew broader attention after being reported by The Guardian on August 12 and by 6abc Action News on August 10.
The cownose ray (Rhinoptera bonasus) is a large, migratory elasmobranch, a subclass of cartilaginous fish that also includes sharks and skates. It is named for its distinctive high-lobed head, which resembles a cow's nose. Adults reach wing spans of up to three feet (approximately one meter). The species feeds primarily on bivalves, including clams, using specialized dental plates to crush shells. Cownose rays typically arrive in Long Island waters during warmer months, migrating north from the Chesapeake Bay and other mid-Atlantic estuaries and waters farther south.
Dean Grubbs, associate director of research at Florida State University's coastal and marine laboratory, assessed the sighting as likely representing a northern shift in the species' migration driven by rising ocean temperatures. Grubbs cited a parallel precedent in blacktip sharks: rarely documented north of North Carolina in the 1970s, increasingly common in Virginia and Delaware by the 1990s, and now frequently observed in New England during warm summers. Ryan Wallace, an assistant professor of environmental studies and sciences at Adelphi University, noted that cownose rays generally prefer water temperatures of 70–79°F (approximately 21–26°C), a range that expanding warm-season conditions in the Northeast may now satisfy more consistently.
The broader context here is that two non-exclusive explanations exist for the sighting's prominence. The first is ecological: warming coastal waters are enabling cownose rays to extend their seasonal range farther north, appearing in Long Island waters more frequently and possibly in greater numbers. The second is technological: the proliferation of consumer and professional drones has dramatically increased the visibility of everyday marine wildlife activity that would have gone undocumented in prior decades. Both dynamics may be operating simultaneously, and the available evidence does not yet distinguish between a genuine range expansion and an observational artifact of expanded aerial monitoring.
For researchers tracking elasmobranch distribution shifts along the U.S. Atlantic coast, the Southampton footage adds a data point to a pattern already documented across multiple species. The blacktip shark analogue Grubbs references is instructive not as proof of an identical trajectory for cownose rays, but as a reminder that range shifts in coastal elasmobranchs can unfold over decades and are often detected anecdotally before systematic surveys confirm them. Drone-captured imagery, increasingly shared via social media, is becoming an informal but high-resolution source of distribution data that complements traditional survey methods.
Steidle described the experience of filming the rays in personal terms on Instagram: "While filming these I can feel my heartbeat and breathing align with their wings flapping...it is in these moments I feel completely connected and present." Her footage, shot from above using drone-mounted cameras, provides a top-down perspective that captures the scale and coordination of the fever in a way that surface-level observation cannot.
Whether this sighting marks a confirmed northward expansion of cownose ray habitat or a single season's anomaly amplified by better technology will require sustained monitoring to determine. What is verifiable is that the imagery exists, the animals were present in significant numbers off Southampton in early August 2026, and marine biologists with relevant expertise consider a temperature-driven range shift the more probable interpretation.
