Public Works Employees Help Rescue Pregnant Stingray Washed Up On Jersey Shore

VENTNOR CITY, NJ — Members of the Ventnor City Public Works Team are being recognized as local heroes after they helped rescue a pregnant stingray in labor that washed up on the Jersey Shore on Tuesday.

The stingray rescue, which was captured on video by Galloway resident Barbara Maurer, shows Public Works employees using a front loader to lift the stingray and deposit it back in the ocean after it washed up on the beach Tuesday morning in Ventnor City.

Once inside the truck, the employees carefully dropped the stingray back into the deeper part of the water so it could safely swim away.

“You guys are heroes,” Maurer can be heard telling the employees in the video.

In an interview with CBS News Philadelphia, the Superintendent of Public Works said the employees quickly realized the stingray was in labor while they were rescuing it, so they made sure to move the sand underneath the ray until they reached a point where the water was deep enough for the stingray to swim away.

"We should not be surprised to see that kind of ray around here, but we should be surprised to see it up on the beach like that," Thomas Grothues, the Director of the Rutgers University Marine Field Station, told CBS.

Grothues went on to say that the ray being out of the water was unusual, though it was probably stressed, which could have led to it washing up on the shore.

Following the stingray’s rescue and return to the water, Grothues told CBS that the ray and her babies have a good chance of survival.

“Thank you to Barbara for documenting our Public Works Team – Doug, Marc, and Gary – rescuing a stingray and returning it to the ocean,” Ventnor City said in an online post. “Well done, team!”

To read the full story from CBS News Philadelphia, you can click here.

To watch a full video of the stingray rescue, you can watch it here.