Critically Endangered
Box ray
Mobula tarapacana
Box ray is an eagle ray in the family Myliobatidae (order Myliobatiformes) — Mobula tarapacana, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
It can reach a disc width of up to 3.7 m (12 ft). Their dives often follow a stepwise pattern, in that the ray dives deeply, then works its way back up by repeatedly "levelling up" for a bit and then moving higher. Rays display two distinct deep-dive patterns.
Range and habitat
It is often observed worldwide, basking just below the surface in tropical, subtropical and warm temperate oceans, mainly offshore, and occasionally appearing near the coast. Originally believed to be surface dwellers, Box ray have been discovered to feed at depths of up to 1,896 metres (6,220 ft) during deep dives. They are among the deepest-diving ocean animals. The ray's behavior may be linked to an organ called the retia mirabilia, that is found in rays and in deep-diving great white sharks.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Sonar observations suggest that rays level up where there are denser layers of prey, suggesting that this is a foraging behavior.
In crisis
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Box 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 Box ray, Wikidata item Q3281177. 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.
