Goodbye to the Seven Mile Eagle Ray

The 1/2 mile competitive swims that we started doing last year always ran from Governor's Beach up to Seven Mile Public Beach.  We also used to do most of our training swims along that same Seven Mile Beach corridor.  Many of the times that we did those swims, we would see an Eagle Ray that likes to hang out off of Governor's Beach.  We saw him so often that we named him our Seven Mile Eagle Ray.  Eagle Rays differ from the more common Southern Sting Rays that we have down here because they are spotted and have much longer tails.  The only problem was that we never had the underwater camera with us when we would do those swims to get some shots of it.

Thursday afternoon I decided to swim the route with the camera and take some shots of the underwater landmarks that we would always see as we did the competitive swims.  I hoped of course to also see our Eagle Ray friend and get a few pictures.  Heading up to Seven Mile the Ray was nowhere in sight and I began to think that he would just have to be in our memories.  But on the swim back to Governors he came meandering along and I got some great shots.  It was nice of him to come out to say goodbye.