Brown Stingray

Fascinating facts about the Brown Stingray

• A 1880 Bulletin paper named the species Trygon lata after measuring a 52 cm (20 in) specimen from the Sandwich Islands.
• When night falls, individual rays in Kaneohe Bay wander over an average of 0.83 km² (0.32 mi²), nearly seven times the 0.12 km² (0.046 mi²) they cover by day, revealing a dramatic shift from sedentary daytime hide-outs to active nocturnal hunting grounds.
• The broad stingray can grow up to 1.5 m (5 ft) wide and weigh 56 kg (123 lb), yet most adults stay around 1 m (3 ft) across, illustrating how size potential far exceeds the typical size we see on reefs.
• Genetic clues suggest the species split from its Atlantic sister, the roughtail stingray, around the time the Isthmus of Panama closed 3 million years ago, hinting that today’s Pacific populations are living fossils of a bygone ocean connection.
• The IUCN lifted the ray’s status to Vulnerable in 2021 because we still don’t know how much of its range falls inside marine protected areas, a reminder that even common-sighted coastal creatures can slip toward decline unnoticed.

At a glance

About the Brown Stingray

The broad stingray, Bathytoshia lata, glides over the soft seafloor with a striking diamond-shaped disc that is a fourth wider than it is long, its olive-brown dorsal surface fading to a crisp white belly. At up to 1.5 m (5 ft) across and 56 kg (123 lb), its long, whip-like tail bears a serrated spine and a narrow ventral fin fold that widens into a keel, while larger individuals sport three elongated tubercles along the middle of their backs. This benthic predator favors sandy or muddy flats from 40 m to 200 m depth, occasionally diving as deep as 800 m, in the Indo-Pacific, the eastern Atlantic, and even the Mediterranean, where it roams the coastal bays and reef edges of places as distant as southern Africa and Hawaii. By day it lies half-buried, barely stirring, but as sunset fades the ray awakens, covering an average of 0.83 km² each night as it excavates pits to uncover crustaceans, polychaete worms, and small bony fish. Its foraging near reef boundaries draws opportunistic jacks, and its diet is complemented by a suite of tapeworm parasites. A surprising trait revealed by tracking in Kaneohe Bay is its lack of tidal fidelity, despite inhabiting deeper waters, its nightly movements are driven more by temperature and the two-hour window after sunset than by the rise and fall of the tide.

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