Ray slams woman on boat in Florida Keys

MIAMI. March 30. KAZINFORM An eagle ray weighing as much as 300 pounds landed on top of a woman on a boat in the Florida Keys last week, throwing her to the deck and pinning her underneath it -- the "scariest thing" that's ever happened to her, she said.

The woman, Jenny Hausch, was on the chartered boat Friday with her husband and three children, taking pictures of a group of eagle rays as they flew out of the water; Kazinform refers to CNN.

"These eagle rays, they were flying through the air," said Kelly Klein of Two Chicks Charters, the captain of the boat. "These giant things go out of the water and slam back down."

Hausch said she was in the front of the boat, snapping away.

"The first picture I took of the ray jumping was 50 feet in front of us," she said.

When the ray jumped again, Hausch said she was readying her camera.

"Next thing I know, it hit me square in the chest. I fell backwards and fell down," she said.

Klein said the ray kept "slamming and slamming on top of (Hausch), trying to swim away."

Hausch said the incident happened so fast that she didn't have time to react.

Eagle rays can measure as much as 10 feet across and 17 feet long -- from their snout to the end of their barbed tails -- and weigh up to 500 pounds, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History. The spines on the tails are venomous and can inflict serious wounds.

In 2008, a woman died from the impact when a ray jumped out of the water and hit her as she boated in the Keys, but Vickers said both incidents were freak accidents.

"This is a total one-in-a-million chance," she said. "These animals aren't attacking by any means. One theory is these animals jump during mating season."

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