{"id":501079,"date":"2026-06-29T12:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T12:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/501079\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T12:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T12:50:10","slug":"stormy-weather-could-be-behind-mass-death-of-eagle-rays-at-porirua-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/501079\/","title":{"rendered":"Stormy weather could be behind mass death of eagle rays at Porirua beach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Beach clean-up volunteers were shocked to find at least 20 dead eagle rays and two Rig Sharks at Porirua Harbour.<\/p>\n<p>Lorraine Shaab from the Wellington Coast Clean-Up Crew said she and other volunteers made the discovery during a clean-up on Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We started at 2.30pm at low tide because that&#8217;s the only time you can cross the inlet to where the rubbish accumulates, and unfortunately, that&#8217;s how we saw all the rays.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was just heartbreaking.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She said they found some of the rays in mudflats and some in the water.<\/p>\n<p>Biosecurity New Zealand&#8217;s Aquatic Health team manager, Mike Taylor, said they suspected <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/weather\/641209\/historic-graves-damaged-by-wild-weather-in-wellington\" class=\"underline-brand-hover visited:text-foreground-secondary hover:visited:text-foreground-primary\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">recent stormy weather<\/a> or potential predatory action from orcas could be to blame, but they had not ruled out exotic disease as a cause.<\/p>\n<p>Specialist staff visited the site on Monday to collect samples and have them tested in an animal health laboratory.<\/p>\n<p>The Department of Conservation confirmed they had been alerted to the mass death, but as the affected animals were not protected species, they would not be involved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beach clean-up volunteers were shocked to find at least 20 dead eagle rays and two Rig Sharks at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-501079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}