Photos of stingrays and eating 'em

On the morning of August 7, Ravean Aaron took a photo of a pod of dolphins swim through “hundreds of” stingrays from the sky above Black’s Beach.

“I recently received my pilot's license and have been flying twice a day ever since,” he said. “I was taking a friend up for a coastal flight and decided to fly over Torrey Pines State Beach to see if there were any dolphins. As we made our way north past Black's Beach, I suddenly discovered a massive school of stingrays just off the coastline.”

Aaron posted his photo on Instagram and it went viral.

Lee, 55, saw Aaron’s photo. “His photo is way better than any of mine,” she said, “mine weren’t as clear.”

Lee was on the Imperial Beach Pier when she saw and took photos of about 40 stingrays down below.

“There’s way more on both sides of the pier with lots of fish swimming with them,” she said.

Aaron is a professional adventure, landscape, and abstract photographer in La Jolla. “I was born and raised here, and grew up in the ocean and on its coastline,” he said, “and this is [only] my second time witnessing a massive school of stingrays.”

Tio, my uncle from Ensenada, has seen schools of stingrays down in their waters. When I visited him on that same Sunday morning that Aaron took the viral photo, we ate some stingray, shrimp, and marlin soup at Tacos el Fiero. I then posted photos of us eating the soup on my Twitter. I didn’t receive one like; Aaron’s IG post received over 4000 likes. “That [many stingrays] can make a lot of soup and tacos,” Tio said.

“I saw a guy catch a couple stingrays on his pole yesterday,” Lee said, “I knew you could probably make soup out of stingrays. I would try anything once.”