Good afternoon Marligator. Many thanks for your comments. I will answer you in two posts because my computer freezes if the message is long.
I do keep records of the numbers of short tails seen, dates, times, tides, locations, number of riders, and so on. I'm a boring old bugger who carries a waterproof notepad with me so I don't have to leave it to memory. The number of short tail stingrays has remained much the same over the past five or six years. Fewer of them are carrying riders and generally those that do are carrying fewer. During the hotter summer months, I was still seeing short tails, but rarely seeing riders. Temperature perhaps. One day I saw 50 to 60 short tails and none were carrying kings but about a third of them were catching medium size kahawai. That is the first time I have seen this.
On the fly or not interested.