WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — By the end of the day on a recent Tuesday, about 5,000 people from three enormous cruise ships had turned up on the long sandbars stretching several miles off the north coast of Grand Cayman.
They were there to play with the stingrays at Stingray City. Despite the theme-park sound of the sandbar's name, the stingrays are wild, and their stingers are intact, unlike the stingrays at real theme parks.
Adrian Ebanks, a boat captain of Bayside Water Sports, shuttles people out to a sandbar where they spend four hours for $40. A trip to see Grand Cayman's friendly stingrays is consistently named one of the top Caribbean attractions by cruise ship passengers.
No one had canceled reservations, said Ebanks, out of fear after hearing about the death of "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin, after a stingray's stinger pierced his heart.
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In the 25 years he's taken people to the sandbars, Ebanks says he has never seen anyone stung. "At least 1 million people a year go out there. The stingrays are very tame, you know, not aggressive at all."
Perhaps it's because these stingrays, who turn up at the sandbars for squid from human hands, are used to being around people. The stingrays have been gathering for many years because this is where local fisherman have cleaned their fish, throwing the remains overboard.
Grand Cayman's Southern Stingray grows to about 4 feet long with stingers about 4 inches long and smooth, not 10 inches and serrated like the stingrays on the Great Barrier Reef.
Irwin's death has been the talk of the island, especially among the captains, who believe Irwin was simply "at the wrong place at the wrong time." Perhaps he grabbed one by the fin, speculates a captain, or accidentally brushed the top of one and surprised it.
"A diver who has been all over the world was telling me that in the Great Barrier Reef, the stingrays and the atmosphere are totally different," says Ebanks.
Meanwhile, the visitors are still arriving by shuttle-boat and glass-bottom boats at the sandbars in Stingray City to stand in the 3-foot-deep crystal-clear water and watch the toothless stingrays that dart around the sandy bottom and sometimes skip on the ocean surface.
