---
title: Pink Whipray (Pateobatis fai)
scientific_name: Pateobatis fai
common_name: Pink Whipray
taxon: Whiptail stingray
conservation_status: VU - Vulnerable
published: 2024-11-04T20:52:21.397Z
updated: 2026-08-17T17:11:33.751Z
tags: Pink Whipray, Pateobatis fai, Whiptail stingray, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/rays/whiptail-stingray/pink-whipray
---

# Pink Whipray (*Pateobatis fai*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Whiptail stingray (*Dasyatidae*)
- **Size:** disc up to 1.8 m across
- **Weight:** 19 Kg
- **Depth:** 1-70 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Sand near coral reef, down to about 70 m
- **Reproduction:** Live-bearer
- **Hazard:** Dangerous, Venomous
- **Conservation status:** VU - Vulnerable

## How to recognise it

- uniform grayish to brownish pink above, with no pattern
- tail at least twice the width of the disc, whip-thin, with no fin folds
- tail turning dark beyond the sting
- often in groups, sometimes resting alongside other ray species
- disc up to 1.8 m across

Most large stingrays are met alone. This one gathers. Groups rest together on sand, sometimes mixed in with other whiprays, and individuals come back to the same patch of bottom over and over rather than wandering, which is unusual enough in a big ray to have been worth studying.

The tail is the thing that stops people. At full length it runs at least twice the width of the disc and can trail several meters behind an animal under two meters across, thin as a whip and carrying the sting close to its base.

The young are fed inside the mother. Rays do not lay eggs and they do not build a placenta either: the embryo uses up its yolk and then the lining of the uterus starts secreting a rich fluid, often called uterine milk, which it takes in until birth. What is born is a small, complete, fully functional ray that can hunt on day one.

On the reef the plain pinkish gray disc with no markings at all is the field mark. The absence of a pattern is the pattern.

## Also known as

- **English:** Pink Whipray, Tahitian Stingray
- **French:** Raie fouet
- **Italian:** Pastinaca rosa, Trigone rosa
- **German:** Rosa-Stechrochen
- **Portuguese:** Raia-de-atol
- **Czech:** trnucha samojská
- **Japanese:** オグロオトメエイ, Ogurotomei
- **FI:** ruususiimarausku
- **TAH:** fai i'u
- **TH:** ปลากระเบนหิน

## Scientific synonyms

- *Himantura fai* Jordan & Seale, 1906

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/rays/whiptail-stingray/pink-whipray)*
*Updated: August 17, 2026*