Endangered
Fanray
Platyrhina sinensis
Fanray is a shark or ray in the family Platyrhinidae (order Torpediniformes) — Platyrhina sinensis, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
The species' upperside is brown in color, its underside white, and the edge of its body yellow. It has wide nostrils, small eyes, a short snout, and a transversal through its mouth splitting it. It has multiple small teeth and thornlike scales on the upperside of its body.
Fanrays grow to a maximum known length of 68 centimetres (27 in), but most specimens are 30–50 centimetres (12–20 in) long and weigh 200–500 grams (7.1–17.6 oz).
Range and habitat
The Fanray lives in the western Pacific Ocean in waters up to 100 metres (330 ft) deep, generally between 30 metres (98 ft) and 40 metres (130 ft) in coastal areas with a sandy sea floor. In particular, it is found off the coasts of China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, and possibly Indonesia. The species is the most common in several countries in the Northern part of its range.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
To feed, it usually stays on the sea floor until there is an opportunity to capture food. It is a nocturnal species.
In crisis
It is probable that its population is declining due to being caught as a bycatch.
Fanray is 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 Fanray, Wikidata item Q4668529. 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.
