Over 100 Rays Died In Anne Arundel County Waterways: Here's Why

GLEN BURNIE, MD — Over 100 rays have died in northern Anne Arundel County waterways in recent weeks, causing an odor in the surrounding communities.

The first die-off was on June 20, the Maryland Department of the Environment told Patch. The MDE went to the site and found about 80 dead cownose rays.

Another 50 to 150 rays died last week in Marley Creek and Furnace Creek, the MDE said. Those waterways are located in the Glen Burnie area.

"Cownose rays travel in schools that can number in the thousands, and they are typically seen in open waters such as the mainstem of the Chesapeake Bay or the mouth of bay tributaries," MDE spokesperson Jay Apperson told Patch in a Thursday email. "The most likely cause of these die offs is overcrowding of rays wandering into smaller bodies of water that do not provide sufficient dissolved oxygen."

Residents said the smell of the dead rays was unpleasant.

"It was so bad, the smell was so horrific, you couldn't even come out of your house," Dale Lott of Glen Burnie's Point Pleasant neighborhood told WBAL-TV. "They had all these cownose stingrays that were just dead."

WBAL-TV reported that the smell has since subsided.

"We were pushing the sting rays off our bulkhead and kept pushing them out and pushing them out and they were just floating," Lott said, according to WBAL-TV. "It cleared up. Going into the fifth day, the stench started to go away. You could come outside and enjoy your back yard and your pier and being out on the water."

More reactions are available in WBAL-TV's story. Readers can learn more about cownose rays in this blog post from the Chesapeake Bay Program.

This map shows the area where officials said the die-offs happened.