One of the fascinating things to do after a meal in Puerto del Carmen is to take a walk to the harbour.  Here, you will see masses of small fish.  If you throw them some scraps of bread, then they will not only fight over it, they will even jump out of the water in the process.

It might almost seem as if these fish spend their entire lives in the harbour, waiting to be fed.

 
Fish fighting over a piece of bread in the harbour at Puerto del Carmen

This fact has not gone unnoticed, and every now and then a stingray comes into the harbour to feed on the fish.

Until now I considered myself lucky if I caught a glimpse of it.  Now, I know that stingrays can be dangerous because of their barb, but I thought that I was quite safe standing on the harbour wall.

That way, until I read this article on the BBC News website.  A stingray swimming off the Florida Keys jumped out of the water and onto a boat, killing someone in the process.  Apparently, this is not the first time that one has jumped out of the water and into a boat, and I immediately thought back to the one I had seen in Puerto del Carmen.

Could it jump out of the water if it wanted to?  I’ll be standing a little further back from the edge next time…

Tags: fish, Puerto del Carmen, stingray

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 5:10 pm and is filed under Puerto del Carmen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.