We passed around a hose of hot water, taking turns refilling our buckets as soon as the water started to cool. You have to keep the temperature as hot as you can tolerate, to neutralize the venom and stave off the pain. There were so many stings that day that lifeguards handed out shiny bags of hot water when they ran out of buckets.<\/p>\n
As I waited for my pain to fully subside \u2014 it can take more than an hour of soaking in hot water \u2014 I watched as a steady stream of people came and went for their stings.<\/p>\n
A young teen, bawling, was consoled by her frantic dad. Others sat silently, grimacing occasionally as their friends or family patted their backs. When the hose with hot water was hogged by a single party too long, the rest of us grew anxious and a little desperate. Still, everyone treated each other kindly \u2014 after all, misery loves company.<\/p>\n
As I sat with my own foot in a bucket of hot water, I had time to wonder: Why are so many people getting stung? And has it always been this way?<\/p>\n
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Bags that lifeguards hand out for stingray victims in need of soaking their feet in hot water.<\/p>\n
Fewer predators, more stingrays<\/p>\n
We have four types of stingrays in Southern California waters \u2014 bat rays, diamond rays, butterfly rays and round stingrays.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe round stingray is the one that most people come to know and love at their local beaches, because they’re the most abundant, and they’re the ones that people accidentally step on the most and get stung by,\u201d said Chris Lowe, director of the Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach.<\/p>\n
Round stingrays come into contact with our feet because they forage on the sea floor for clams, crabs, isopods and small fish. They hide from predators under the sand while they digest. Understandably, they strongly dislike being stepped on, especially with a full belly. I don\u2019t blame \u2018em.<\/p>\n
Round stingrays range from Panama up to Santa Barbara County \u2014 the northern tip of their range. Over the last hundred years, their populations have been growing steadily, largely because we killed off many of their predators, such as sea lions, white sharks and sea bass, last century.<\/p>\n
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A round stingray (Urolophus halleri) in an aquarium.<\/p>\n
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Now, thanks to conservation efforts and improved fishing practices, many of those predators are making a comeback.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a result of those predator populations coming back, we expect the round stingray population to get tamped down a little bit,\u201d Lowe said.<\/p>\n
Stingrays or \u201cwhite shark pancakes,\u201d Lowe joked, are \u201cthe first food we think the juvenile white sharks that hang out off our beaches really take advantage of.\u201d<\/p>\n
More people, more stings<\/p>\n
At the same time, coastal development over the last 100 years has destroyed much of the habitat that stingrays prefer, such as lagoons and estuaries, which have calm, shallow warm water and sediment to hide under. Now, the habitat available to them is primarily coastal beaches.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat puts a lot more people in the path of what we call prime round stingray habitat,\u201d Lowe said.<\/p>\n
In January, officials at Huntington Beach warned<\/a> beachgoers of an uptick in stingray activity. Down the road in Seal Beach, a popular surf spot has long been known as \u201cRay Bay.\u201d<\/p>\n Here in Southern California, estimates are that lifeguards treat more than 10,000 stings a year, Lowe said. That\u2019s likely a very conservative estimate, he added, since many people don\u2019t seek treatment.<\/p>\n The climate change effect<\/p>\n Climate change is increasingly playing a role in stingray life too, Lowe said, by warming waters that historically have been too cool for them to survive.<\/p>\n Over the last 200 years, human society has pumped an unprecedented level of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is heating up the planet. The ocean has been our main buffer to the worst effects of that pollution \u2014 it absorbs about 30% of all carbon dioxide emissions and about 90% of the excess heat generated by those emissions, according to NASA<\/a>.<\/p>\n The marine heat wave known as “the blob” at its near maximum areal extent in September 2014, left. At right, the ongoing marine heat wave at its near maximum areal extent in September 2025.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not only changing the chemical composition of the ocean, but also driving worsening marine heatwaves<\/a> or \u201cblobs,\u201d which can lead to mass die-offs of marine life. In fact, we\u2019ve been in a record-breaking marine heat wave<\/a> since last summer.<\/p>\n \u201cThe pattern at which these marine heat waves are increasing is clearly an indicator of climate change,\u201d Lowe said. \u201cSo these are all real true harbingers of climate change, and we’re seeing the animals that live in these environments respond to these conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n Human-caused climate change is making marine heat waves more extreme and frequent. his graph depicts the increasing surface area of marine heat wave anomalies in the California Current region from 1982 to the present.<\/p>\n Though they can withstand only so much heat, stingrays prefer temperate, subtropical waters.<\/p>\n \u201cAs the ocean continues to warm, that range gets pushed farther north, which means the habitat in Southern California just becomes even more pleasant to the round stingray,\u201d Lowe said. \u200a<\/p>\n Over the last 50 years, round stingrays have had periodic pulses as far north as Monterey. And with an El Ni\u00f1o weather pattern likely this year, \u200a\u201dwe might start seeing animals even farther north,\u201d Lowe said.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776129796_772_.png\")
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