HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Jake Hemann grabbed a board and headed out to surf. But an hour later, he wound up sitting at the lifeguard station soaking his foot in a pail of hot water alongside four other beachgoers.It is a common scene at Bolsa Chica State Beach and some other popular beaches in Southern California where the number of people being hit by the sharp, serrated caudal barbs found on the tails of stingrays has gone up significantly from a year ago as a marine heat wave draws more stingrays — and people — to shore. Hemann, a 31-year-old tourist from New Mexico, said he was learning to surf when he hopped off his board and landed on what he thought was a sharp stick. “It hurt pretty bad,” he said, while sinking his throbbing foot into the hottest water tolerable to ease the pain. “It was radiating up to my ankle.”Bolsa Chica and Huntington State Beaches reported more than 3,100 incidents so far this year, twice the number for all of 2025. The city of Huntington Beach’s 3.5-mile (5.6 kilometer) stretch of shoreline has reported more than 2,000 such incidents so far this year, more than during all last year, while more than 900 stings were recorded on San Diego’s beaches during the first half of 2026, more than during the first six months of any of the past five years, lifeguard data shows. “We’re definitely seeing an increase,” said Bryan R. Etnyre, state park superintendent in northern Orange County. “A lot of it is due to warming ocean temperatures that are consistently staying in the 60s. I don’t think there was a week all winter where we dropped below 60 this year.”