Its mouth is open and its thick, fleshy 'wings' are wrapping themselves around the sides of my upstanding body. Panicking, I proffer the halved herring I'm holding. The giant stingray sucks the fish into its gaping mouth, slithers back down into the water and glides off.I exhale...
"That was Phoebe," says Bex, my guide for the Stingray Splash adventure here at Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World in Auckland.
"She's been here for about 20 years. She's also the largest fish here at Kelly Tarlton's, weighing in at around 250kg.
"Oh, and here she comes again."
Phoebe has doubled back, hungry for more herring. I watch her rippling stealthily towards me through the water, like a low-lying, angry black storm cloud.
She circles me then rears up again, flapping her enormous two-metre wingspan as if she's trying to take flight. Her vast flat body is pressed against mine and her 250kg force is so strong I have to steel myself on the sandy floor to stop from falling over.
Following Bex's instructions I scratch Phoebe under her 'chin'.
"Stingrays are just like big puppies really," she says while I tickle the smooth, slimy white expanse just below Phoebe's gummy, triangular mouth.
Cute, vulnerable puppy dogs aren't the first thought that's conjured when one thinks of stingrays. In fact, the first thought these days seems to be of Steve Irwin, who was famously killed by a stingray barb to the heart in 2006.
"Don't do a Steve Irwin," my friends jokingly warned me when I told them I was booked in to handfeed stingrays.
I laughed it off, but as I stand there tickling Phoebe, Bex says gently, "There's another one right behind you. Just remember, don't step backwards."
Despite Irwin's high profile demise, the consequences of stepping on a stingray's barbed tail are unlikely to be lethal.
A stingray's stinger is a long spine of venom-coated, serrated cartilage located at the base of the tail. A protective membrane or sheath covers the stinger. Usually when a stingray's barb stabs a human the entry pressure tears the sheath away allowing the sharp, serrated stinger to sink in to the flesh, releasing its venom.
Although extremely painful, stingrays' venom isn't usually deadly. The few stingray deaths that have occurred around the world were mainly due to the flesh-tearing barb injecting directly into a major organ.
Stingrays are generally placid animals, Bex explains, only attacking if they feel cornered or threatened: a fact I wouldn't have believed had I not been tickling one under the chin as it flapped its wings in apparent glee.Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World is home to four short-tailed stingrays. Like most creatures here at Kelly Tarlton's, they were rescued or acquired from local waters. Phoebe and her friends have recently been moved to their new home, 'Stingray Bay' - a 350,000 litre open-topped acrylic tank which lets visitors peer directly into the tank and even get splashed by the playful rays.
Such intimate encounters with local marine life is what the late Kelly Tarlton envisaged when he dreamt up his underwater world in the 1980s. As a child, Kelly was inspired by Jacques Cousteau's film Silent World and went on to develop his own SCUBA diving gear, then his own commercial diving company before realising his dream of creating a public attraction where everyone could share a diver's perspective of the ocean.
Built completely underground, Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World is best known for its revolutionary 110-metre long transparent aquarium tunnel, through which visitors are transported by conveyor belt. As they move through the dry tunnel sharks, rays and thousands of obscure fish swim alongside and overhead, thrillingly nearby. The aquarium holds an astounding two million litres of fresh ocean water, one quarter of which is replaced daily, pumped in from the surrounding Waitemata Harbour.As well as the underwater world, frequent additions such as Stingray Bay and the Antarctic Encounter, featuring King and Gentoo penguins in an Antarctic-like setting, keep the punters rolling in - over 10 million to date.
There's a good handful of visitors watching me now as I stand up to my midriff in the waters of Stingray Bay, dangling half herrings from my fingers. Bex is gently guiding me towards - or away from - the circling rays. Directly in front of me a black, writhing storm of kahawai and trevally bubbles and stirs and before I know it, one has leapt out, grabbing my finger in its clamp-like mouth. I scream. Bex laughs, "They're feisty," she says, fending off her own storm as she moves through the water.Far more feisty and frightening, in fact, than the placid, puppy-dog stingrays. "Stingrays are just such intriguing animals," says Bex. "They're so friendly, inquisitive and very perceptive. They play games with us, and they seem to warm to certain people."
As Phoebe returns, launching herself directly at me again in a slimy farewell embrace Bex assures me, "Phoebe definitely likes you!"
Amelia experienced the Stingray Splash courtesy of Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World and Tourism Holdings Ltd.
Amelia is Content Editor for the New Zealand travel and tourism website www.fourcorners.co.nz.
