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A round stingray, the most common type of stingray living along our shores — and the most likely to sting you. This story is free to read because readers choose to support LAist. If you find value in independent local reporting, as climate change warms the oceans, Southern California waters have become more hospitable to stingrays. And humans are more frequently at risk of being stung. I recently had the excruciatingly painful experience of being stung by a stingray while swimming at Bolsa Chica State Beach. It was my second time being stung, so as soon as I felt the familiar stab in the bottom of my foot, dread arose. But at least this time I knew what to do.
Ironically, I’d just been telling her about the “stingray shuffle” — the strategy to shuffle your feet as you enter the water and therefore scare any nearby stingrays away. I swam as fast as I could to the sand and sprinted to the nearest lifeguard tower. Already, the pain was sharp in my foot, and I could feel it pulsing up my leg, growing more intense. I took deep breaths and tried to keep my face stoic. If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.
Now, you lucky folks who have never been stung may be smirking at my desperation. But if you know, you know — a stingray’s sting is no joke. A kind lifeguard wrapped my bleeding foot in gauze and drove me in his pickup truck to the main tower. When we got there, I hopped into a painfully comedic scene: About 10 other sorry souls sat in a semicircle of chairs, each with one foot in a bucket full of scalding water. You’re most likely to get stung by a stingray during low tide on warm water days when the surf is relatively calm — basically when it’s an ideal beach day. The stingray shuffle — or shuffling your feet in the sand as you enter the water — is your best defense, according to Lowe. Also, check for signage warning of high stingray activity, usually posted at the entrance to beaches.
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. As I waited for my pain to fully subside — it can take more than an hour of soaking in hot water — I watched as a steady stream of people came and went for their stings. 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 — after all, misery loves company. 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?
“The 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,” said Chris Lowe, director of the Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach. Late negotiations have yet to secure a deal. If teachers, support staff and principals walk out, school will shut down for about 400,000 students. The 240-pound turtle was taken to the aquarium in January after being found entangled in fishing line and rope in the San Gabriel River. Reynold Hoover also said LA28 wasn't using dynamic pricing yet, but could in future sales. In other words, tickets could get even pricier.
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’t blame ‘em. Round stingrays range from Panama up to Santa Barbara County — 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. Now, thanks to conservation efforts and improved fishing practices, many of those predators are making a comeback. “As a result of those predator populations coming back, we expect the round stingray population to get tamped down a little bit,” Lowe said. Stingrays or “white shark pancakes,” Lowe joked, are “the first food we think the juvenile white sharks that hang out off our beaches really take advantage of.”
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. beachgoers of an uptick in stingray activity. Down the road in Seal Beach, a popular surf spot has long been known as “Ray Bay.” Here in Southern California, estimates are that lifeguards treat more than 10,000 stings a year, Lowe said. That’s likely a very conservative estimate, he added, since many people don’t seek treatment.
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. 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 — it absorbs about 30% of all carbon dioxide emissions and about 90% of the excess heat generated by those emissions. 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. “The pattern at which these marine heat waves are increasing is clearly an indicator of climate change,” Lowe said. “So these are all real true harbingers of climate change, and we're seeing the animals that live in these environments respond to these conditions.” 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.
“As 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,” Lowe said. Over the last 50 years, round stingrays have had periodic pulses as far north as Monterey. And with an El Niño weather pattern likely year this year, ”we might start seeing animals even farther north,” Lowe said. Last year’s extreme marine heat wave You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our connected community. We are free to tell the full truth, to hold power to account without fear or favor, and to follow facts wherever they lead . Our only loyalty is to our audiences and our mission: to inform, engage, and strengthen our community. Right now, LAist has lost $1.7M in annual funding due to Congress clawing back money already approved. The support we receive from readers like you will determine how fully our newsroom can continue informing, serving, and strengthening Southern California. Rain on Sunday
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