A Drone Pilot Filmed Thousands of Rays Off New York. Here's What's Going On.
On August 7, 2026, a drone pilot named Joanna Steidle filmed what she called "thousands of cownose rays" swimming together near the surface off Southampton, on Long Island's South Fork. The video, taken about 125 yards from shore, shows the rays moving in a big group — something people call a "fever." The Guardian
Steidle, who lives in the Hamptons, takes photos of ocean wildlife like whales, sharks, rays, dolphins, and menhaden (a small fish that many marine animals eat). She has filmed cownose rays in the area before — a 2023 post showed a group of them near a school of menhaden off Southampton, and she sells drone footage of rays swimming through a school of fish on her website. This latest video gained wider attention after The Guardian reported on it August 12 and 6abc Action News covered it August 10.
Cownose rays are large fish with skeletons made of cartilage — the same flexible material in human noses and ears — rather than bone. Sharks and skates belong to the same group. The rays get their name from their head shape, which looks a bit like a cow's nose. Adults can grow wingspans of up to three feet (about one meter). They eat shellfish like clams, crushing the shells with specialized teeth. These rays usually arrive in Long Island waters during warmer months, swimming north from the Chesapeake Bay and other areas along the mid-Atlantic coast.
Dean Grubbs, a scientist at Florida State University's coastal and marine laboratory, said the sighting likely reflects a northward shift in the rays' migration caused by rising ocean temperatures. He pointed to a similar pattern in blacktip sharks: in the 1970s, they were rarely seen north of North Carolina. By the 1990s, they showed up more often in Virginia and Delaware. Now, they're frequently spotted in New England during warm summers. Ryan Wallace, a professor at Adelphi University, noted that cownose rays prefer water between 70 and 79°F (about 21–26°C), and that warming conditions in the Northeast may now keep the water in that range more often.
The broader context here is that two possible explanations exist for why this sighting got so much attention, and they aren't mutually exclusive. The first is ecological: warming coastal waters may be allowing cownose rays to travel farther north than they used to, showing up around Long Island more frequently and in larger numbers. The second is technological: drones are far more common now than in past decades, so wildlife activity that would have gone unseen before is being captured on camera. Both could be happening at the same time, and scientists don't yet have enough evidence to say for sure which one is driving what we're seeing.
For researchers studying how fish populations are shifting along the U.S. Atlantic coast, the Southampton footage adds one more piece to a pattern they've already noticed across several species. The blacktip shark example Grubbs mentioned is useful not because cownose rays will follow the exact same path, but because it shows that these kinds of shifts can take decades and are often noticed through individual sightings before formal studies confirm them. Drone footage shared on social media is becoming a helpful, informal way to track where animals are showing up.
Steidle wrote about the experience 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 drone footage, shot from above, shows the full size and coordination of the group in a way you couldn't see from the water's surface.
Whether this means cownose rays are permanently moving north or it's just a one-time event made visible by better cameras will take long-term monitoring to figure out. What's certain is that the rays were there in large numbers off Southampton in early August 2026, and that marine biologists who study these animals think warming waters are the most likely explanation.
