Critically Endangered
Bentfin devil ray
Mobula thurstoni
Bentfin devil ray is an eagle ray in the family Myliobatidae (order Myliobatiformes) — Mobula thurstoni, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
The bentfin devil ray can reach a disc width of 189 cm (6.2 ft) and weigh about 54 kg (120 lb). The length of the disc is about 1.95 times its width. On either side of the snout are cephalic flaps, and the mouth is on the underside of the head.
The length of the tail is between half the disc width and the whole disc width, and the tail does not bear a spine.
Range and habitat
This species is probably circumglobal, and has been recorded from tropical and sub-tropical waters in the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. It is found worldwide in tropical, subtropical and warm temperate oceans, with records from Australia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Japan, Malaysia, Maldives, Mexico, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United States (California), Uruguay, Vanuatu and throughout the central and western Pacific. It likely occurs in many other locations in tropical, subtropical and warm temperate oceans.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Rays feed on the bottom or in open water depending on the family. Nets and shallow-water fisheries are the usual human contact.
Sharks and rays grow slowly and have few young. A fishery that treats them as bycatch can empty a coastal form.
In crisis
Although it has a wide range, it is targeted by fisheries in some regions and is caught as bycatch in gill nets and by trawling in others. The population trend is unknown but the fish is reported as uncommon. For these reasons, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has rated its conservation status as being "endangered".
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Bentfin devil ray is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Bentfin devil ray, Wikidata item Q3280996. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
