---
title: Bottlenose Wedgefish (Rhynchobatus australiae)
scientific_name: Rhynchobatus australiae
common_name: Bottlenose Wedgefish
taxon: Wedgefish
conservation_status: CR - Critically Endangered
published: 2024-11-04T13:19:35.083Z
updated: 2026-08-23T14:11:26.839Z
tags: Bottlenose Wedgefish, Rhynchobatus australiae, Wedgefish, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/rays/wedgefish/bottlenose-wedgefish
---

# Bottlenose Wedgefish (*Rhynchobatus australiae*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Wedgefish (*Rhinidae*)
- **Size:** up to 3 m
- **Depth:** 1-60 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Very Rare
- **Habitat:** Sand and rubble flats in shallow coastal water
- **Reproduction:** Live-bearer, Gonochoric
- **CITES:** Appendix II
- **Conservation status:** CR - Critically Endangered

## How to recognise it

- rounded snout, blunter than in the whitespotted wedgefish
- white spots over the back with a dark blotch above each pectoral fin
- lies on sand and moves off with the tail rather than the disc
- up to 3 m

It bears live young, a few at a time, and that is the whole problem.

A female carries her embryos internally, nourishes them after the yolk runs out, and gives birth to a small litter of fully formed animals around forty-five centimeters long. She does that after taking several years to mature, and she may repeat it every other year. Over a lifetime that is a few dozen offspring, not a few million.

It is the same arithmetic that runs through every large shark and ray, and it is why they cannot be fished like bony fish. A grouper answers heavy fishing by producing more eggs; an animal with this reproductive rate has no such lever. Take the adults faster than they can be replaced and the population goes down and stays down, sometimes for decades after the fishing stops.

Everything that makes a wedgefish easy to catch also applies: it is large, it lives in shallow coastal water on sand, and its fins are valuable. Most of the Indo-Pacific has lost it.

Here it still turns up, rarely, on sand flats near reef, a three-meter ray with a blunt rounded snout that swims like a shark and leaves like one.

## Also known as

- **English:** Bottlenose Wedgefish, White-spotted Shovelnose Ray, White-spotted Shovelnosed Guitarfish
- **Arabic:** سمكة الوتد ذات الأنف القاروري, قيثارات البحر بيضاء النقط
- **French:** raie guitare
- **Italian:** Pesce chitarra a macchie bianche, Pesce violino a macchie bianche
- **German:** Weißgefleckter Geigenrochen, Weißflecken-Gitarrenrochen
- **Portuguese:** Raia-viola-de-pintas-brancas
- **Dutch:** Australische kegrog
- **Japanese:** トンガリサカタザメ, Tongarisakatazame
- **Chinese:** 南方龍紋鱝
- **TH:** ปลาโรนันจุดขาว

## Scientific synonyms

- *Rhynchobatus djiddensis australiae* Whitley, 1939

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/rays/wedgefish/bottlenose-wedgefish)*
*Updated: August 23, 2026*