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SFist reader Molly took these shots of another (presumably dead) ray thingy over on Powell between Geary and O'Farrell. She tells us:
It was just lying in the back of a pickup truck parked on the street. Not sure if it's related to the other ray and the starfish, but it seems pretty fishy (sorry for the pun). I noticed it when it flopped, so it must have been still alive. A woman was sitting in the passenger side of the truck talking on her cell phone. No one else on the street really seemed to notice.
Cultural ritual? Satanic ritual? Photoshop hoax? Armageddon? We can't say for sure why we're seeing aquatic life dead here in SF. Maybe we just never noticed it before? Strange. But over the past week, Market Street has played host to a dead manta ray and starfish.
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Wow. WTF?
Didn't someone mention that some people catch these for their tails? I wonder what that's about.
The question is why did person taking these pics not confront the women in the truck? Is it illegal to capture rays? It's obviously not for food because it would have been on ice...yes/no?
Does anyone have connections to the DMV to track down the license plate? This is getting really disturbing.
What the hell is going on?!
chap wrote: ...The question is why did person taking these pics not confront the women in the truck?
you're kidding, right?
Yeah chap, agreed. Who's got sleuth skills in here? Run those numbers..
I lived in the tropics for a while and got to spend time with a lot of these animals in the wild. They are beautiful, gentle and generally do not enjoy riding around cities in pick up trucks..
I do think it is food related though. Probably was headed into or from China Town, no?
That, folks, is just a common ray or skate which are in no way endangered (and are quite tasty). Manta, or devil rays, measure up to 25 feet across, are a threatened species, and live nowhere near the San Francisco Bay Area.
travin - I was not kidding. The women taking the pic saw the ray flopping around. It was dying in the back of that truck. They could have at least killed it to put it out of its misery. I would have definitely confronted the women and asked if it was for food (ok fine) or to be dropped off on the sidewalk again.
i used to hang around with someone who would catch skate off the albany bulb, take the tail for accessorizing hats and bbq the rest. sometimes circular portions are cut and sold as "scallops."
This has got to be some totally gross viral marketing.
on the one hand, i want to know what political strife group is using this as their subversive message.
on the other hand, im skeptical, because while we have picked up on 3 of these sorts of sightings at sfist, i haven't seen anything on any other blog or sfgate. now, if there were some major thing going on on market surrounding wandering sea creatures, don't you think some other news source would also be picking this up? i mean, yea, they may all be that dense, but in all seriousness its hard for me to believe.
omg,what?
Please read this:
http://www.pierfishing.com/pier_of_the_month/9907.html
It's regarding fishing off the pier at Maritime Park.
8th paragraph down:
"The vast majority of the fish that are caught are the old standbys for this area: white croaker, walleye and silver surfperch, striped seaperch, black seaperch, white seaperch, pileperch, shinerperch, jacksmelt, Pacific tomcod, sand sole, Pacific sanddabs, starry flounder, English sole, California halibut, brown rockfish, black rockfish, striped bass, brown smoothhound sharks, leopard sharks, California skates, big skates and bat rays. "
Further on: "Summer and fall are the best times for sharks, skates and rays, although some big runs of bat rays have been recorded in the spring."
Sometimes the most obvious answer is the hardest to fathom, isn't it?
Jas, no. That's perfect. I was wondering where we could check what's "in season". Thanks for the much needed reality check.
Ok, yes. I see that it's probably for food but...still can't figure out the ray and starfish sitings on Market St.
I use to catch those ray off Elephant Rock in Tiburon all the time. never ate them though, because i'm not a huge fan of scallops. catch and release.
Jas
Thanks for the info, but doesn't anyone still feel sorry for the possibly slowly dying ray?
I agree, it either should be put out of its misery, or something really strange is going on here.
this is screwed up
i agree w/ emilys
Poor thing but I'm not surprised, some people have no regard for animal welfare let alone rights.
I'll never understand how humans determine their caring for the life of another animal based on the quantity remaining of that animal's species.
Maybe if we start respecting all life, we won't have to worry about species becoming extinct.
Someone caught this skate in the bay and threw it in the back of their truck so they can take it to a restaurant or market to sell. It's common to do this in countries where you don't have ice handy. The first skate on market st. was probably dumped because they couldn't find a buyer. There are tons of these in the bay right now.
The starfish was a hoax.
Ummm. I'm just going to play devil's advocate here, but really, if these folks were fishing for ray, catching thier own food to process and prepare I can't get very outraged.
Yes, the practice of letting the one's fish die on thier own in the back of a pickup is tacky (but it keeps the thing fresh on the ride home). It's hardly tackier then that of commercial fishing though -- slow choking death in nets, or freezing to death in the hold while trying to breath the deadly deadly air. Ummm. Yeah.
Still, I can't get too upset about that either. If one is eating meat, even fish (hell even shrimp - they have nerves), one is allowing untold pain to be inflicted on animals. No real way around it.
If one wants to complain about that fine, reasonable enough. Still, if this rayocidal maniac is actually going to eat his fish and not dump it on the sidewalk, all I can muster is a shrug.
o rly? tell us more, fred.
You know, animals up and down the food chain kill and eat each other in spectacularly disrespectful ways. That includes us humans. Jimmy fisherman tossing his ray in the back of his truck is no different than any other fisherman the world over - except that a squeamish, finger-pointing public happened to notice this time around.
It's useful to be a self-loathing homosapien. Because in the absence of god, that's all that's left. So why not express your insecurity of being through doe-eyed creatures?
It's obviously Migden's way of getting out her aggression for losing to ultra-sweet Mark Leno. Look for more weird shit from the oxicotin-queen for the next several months. Hide your pets and children! Especially, for now, your manta rays!
hmmm...slow news week. Maybe Russia will invade Poland and give us something global to focus on. Or maybe Brad and Angelina will do something like fart or eat corn flakes.
Where's Chris Daly when we need him...
Nice catch, Molly!!
@bornandraised: This IS where I get all my Bay Area news. If I don't see it here, well damn, I can't be sure that it really exists.
Here is what realy happened at 000 Montgomery that day
http://000montgomery.ning.com/video/video/show?id=1998303:Video:522
It's so weird that so many people are so upset about this when hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of sharks and rays are killed every year commercially for their fins (fins cut off, animal thrown over the side to die) and no one makes much of a fuss.
The real phenomena is how it fell out of the invisible building
http://000montgomery.ning.com/video/video/show?id=1998303:Video:522
http://reclaimingmisshavisham.typepad.com/reclaiming_miss_havisham/2008/08/yes-video-footage-of-manta-ray-mystery.html