Cownose rays fly high on my list of cool summer fish to follow. That coolness was again in full flow last week with mind-bogglingly huge schools of them winging around Barnegat Inlet and, somewhat alarmingly, inside Barnegat Bay.

The inlet fever, a weird nickname for a slew of stingrays, contained thousands and thousands of these cartilaginous gliders. Jetty-end fishermen watched a single school pass nonstop for over five minutes.

Oddly, the species is listed as “Near Threatened” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural…