Thousands of Cownose Rays Filmed Off Long Island, and What It May Tell Us About Warming Waters
On August 7, 2026, professional drone pilot Joanna Steidle captured footage of what she described as "thousands of cownose rays" swimming in a dense group near the surface off Southampton, on Long Island's South Fork. The video, taken about 125 yards from shore, shows the rays moving in what's colloquially called a "fever" — the term for a large gathering of rays. The Guardian
Steidle, based in the Hamptons, photographs whales, sharks, rays, dolphins, and menhaden (a type of forage fish) as part of her wildlife conservation work. She has documented cownose rays in the area before: a 2023 post showed a fever of rays alongside a school of menhaden off Southampton, and her top-down drone footage of rays splitting a menhaden school — taken off Southampton in a prior year — is sold through her website. This latest capture drew wider attention after The Guardian reported it on August 12 and 6abc Action News covered it on August 10.
The cownose ray (Rhinoptera bonasus) is a large, migratory species of elasmobranch — the subclass of cartilaginous fish whose skeletons are made of cartilage rather than bone, a group that also includes sharks and skates. The ray gets its name from its high-lobed head, which resembles a cow's nose. Adults can reach wing spans of up to three feet (about one meter). They feed mainly on bivalves such as clams, using specialized dental plates to crush shells. Cownose rays typically show up in Long Island waters during warmer months, migrating north from the Chesapeake Bay and other mid-Atlantic estuaries, as well as 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 northward shift in the species' migration, driven by rising ocean temperatures. He drew a parallel with blacktip sharks: rarely documented north of North Carolina in the 1970s, they became increasingly common in Virginia and Delaware by the 1990s, and are 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 warming conditions in the Northeast may now satisfy more consistently.
The broader context here is that two non-exclusive explanations exist for why this sighting drew attention. The first is ecological: warming coastal waters may be enabling cownose rays to extend their seasonal range farther north, appearing in Long Island waters more frequently and perhaps in greater numbers. The second is technological: the spread of consumer and professional drones has vastly increased the visibility of everyday marine wildlife activity that would have gone undocumented in previous decades. Both dynamics could be operating at once, and the available evidence does not yet distinguish between a genuine range expansion and what scientists call an observational artifact — something that looks new simply because we now have better tools to see it.
For researchers tracking distribution shifts in cartilaginous fish along the U.S. Atlantic coast, the Southampton footage adds a data point to a pattern already documented across multiple species. The blacktip shark comparison Grubbs cites 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 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 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 with a drone-mounted camera, captures the scale and coordination of the fever in a way that surface-level observation cannot.
Whether this sighting confirms a northward expansion of cownose ray habitat or reflects a single season's anomaly amplified by better technology will require sustained monitoring to determine. What is verifiable is that the animals were present in significant numbers off Southampton in early August 2026, and that marine biologists with relevant expertise consider a temperature-driven range shift the more probable interpretation.
