PROVINCETOWN — As part of their research and conservation work, Carol “Krill” Carson and volunteers from her New England Coastal Wildlife Alliance are often out walking beaches most of the year, even in winter. They look for cold-stunned sea turtles in the fall and ocean sunfish, and they occasionally come across a strange-looking fish known as a torpedo ray, or torpedo fish. So it was not unusual for Carson and her team to head out two days after Christmas to follow up on a report of several of these large rays on Long Point Beach. They ended up finding and documenting 31 torpedo rays over two days.