Tourists are wrecking stingrays’ eating, sleeping, and mating habits

Each stingray on this sandbar off Grand Cayman earns the islands about $500,000 every year in tourism revenue. Globally, this kind of interactive wildlife experience is big business, generating about $165 billion each year worldwide.

Careful monitoring of these primordial-looking creatures revealed that the lifestyle of stingrays on the sandbar [in Stingray City] was barely recognizable as natural stingray behavior at all.

… the most surprising discovery was that the rays of Stingray City were no longer nocturnal. The rays of the sandbar were also much more aggressive towards each other…