SALEM - The sight of three jet skiers towing a large, dead manta ray from the North River greeted Beverly resident Jeff Copelas' wedding reception yesterday afternoon.
It took eight or nine people, some from Copelas' wedding party, to hoist the quarter-ton manta ray onto the dock of Stromberg's Restaurant, the site of the reception, at the base of the Beverly Bridge.
The manta birostris looked like a large, hulking lump as it took up most of the width of the Stromberg's dock with its distinctive horns on the dock and its tail still in the water.
"This is an Atlantic manta ray, it's a huge animal," said Tony LaCasse, the New England Aquarium spokesman who came to Salem yesterday evening to check on the report.
The manta ray measured 11 feet from wing tip to wing tip, and 7 feet, 8 inches in length from a central spot on its head to the base of its tail. The "guesstimate" on its weight was 600 pounds, LaCasse said. Manta rays have been known to have 22-foot wingspans.
"It primarily eats plankton and shrimp," LaCasse said, "and it also does eat occasional small fish. But this is an animal that is completely harmless to people." The only danger it poses to people is when it gets caught in fishing nets.
"This is sort of the northern extent where you can see an Atlantic manta ray, they are occasionally spotted in New England waters and it is way off shore." They are normally found in the tropics, as far south as Brazil.
The manta ray appears to fly through the water like a bird.
"It'll glide along and go through whatever its potential prey is and it will collect it" in its mouth.
LaCasse said aquarium officials guessed the ray, though large, was underweight, which meant it was having trouble finding food or it might have been injured, so it could not forage well.
"Most likely it has some underlying disease," LaCasse said.
However, the aquarium will not be conducting an autopsy, because it's not accustomed to handling manta rays so large.
"You won't see a manta ray this large at an aquarium anywhere in the world," LaCasse said.
LaCasse said the Massachusetts Environmental Police called the aquarium to check out the manta ray.
Its fate is uncertain. If it had been a marine mammal, the New England Aquarium would have taken charge of the carcass. Instead, the disposal of it may be up to the city, or the person who found it, LaCasse said.
The animal appeared dead when Bob Cohn of 117 Water St., Beverly, his 14-year-old daughter Lauren and a friend Chuck Twombley, cruised up to it around noon.
"We thought it was a manta ray, but I didn't think it could come up this way," said Cohn, a case manager for a personal-injury law firm, about the ray that is usually found in tropical waters.
Cohn said he and his party were halfway down the North River, which ends on North Street, when they spotted the manta ray.
They used hooks to tow it to Stromberg's, then several people, including George Kastrinakis, 13, son of Stromberg's owner Peter Kastrinakis; Mitch Hamor, 14; and Coty Miller, 14, helped haul the beast onto the dock along with wedding party guests Justin Sullivan, Pat Henebury and Chad Copelas, all of Beverly.
"It must have been sick or dying," Lauren said. "The two little eyes were pointing out."
Salem's Assistant Harbormaster Steve Levesque said Salem patrolmen spotted the manta ray in the North River on Saturday.
George said one of the environmental police told him he had never seen a manta ray that large around here.
"I don't think I want to swim in the ocean anymore," he kidded.
Around 5 p.m., Fresh Taste of Asia owner Frandy Xu stopped by the dock to see if the manta ray could be salvaged, but he had never seen a fish like it.
"This fish is not fresh anymore," he said.
