up to 35 cm across5 Kg0-30 mDangerousVenomousLeast Concern
2156
A yellow-brown oval disc up to 35 cm (14 in) across, scattered with electric-blue spots, with two blue stripes down a thick tail. It is the ray everyone photographs, usually while it is wedged under a coral head with the tail sticking out.
The tail is armed. One or two serrated barbs sit near the tip, backed by venom glands in a groove, and the ray uses them by whipping the tail overhead - a defense aimed upward, at something pinning it down. Stings on divers happen almost exclusively when someone corners a ray under a ledge or stands on one in the shallows; the wound is deep, the venom causes severe pain and the barb often breaks off inside.
It feeds at night on sand flats, hunting worms, shrimps and small fish by pumping water through the mouth to blow them out of the sediment. By day it hides, which is why the species looks solitary but gathers in numbers on a night dive.
Unlike most rays it rarely buries itself, relying on the blue spots to break up its outline instead - a warning pattern rather than camouflage, which fits an animal that carries a weapon.
The genus.Taeniura Müller & Henle 1837 - taenia (band or ribbon) + ourá (tail). ETYFish
The species.Taeniura lymma (Fabricius 1775) - Arabic name for this fish. ETYFish
How to recognise it
oval yellow-brown disc scattered with bright electric-blue spots
two blue stripes running the length of the tail
thick tail with a deep fin fold underneath, carrying one or two barbs near the tip
The Bluespotted Lagoon Ray is caught intentionally and as retained bycatch in artisanal and commercial fisheries in low numbers throughout the Indo-Pacific. It is captured by longline, handline, gill net, trammel net, and harpoons (A. Bin Ali unpubl. data 2020). This species is commonly caught by Bajau Laut in Malaysia and Indonesia using harpoons. This species comprises 2.7% of the rays landed in the markets of Singapore that are captured in either Malaysian or Indonesian waters (N. Clark-Shen pers. comm. 06/05/2020). In the Philippines, this species is one of the most prevalent ray species reported caught in fisheries from 1999 to 2016 across 9 regions (BFAR-NFRDI 2017). Surveys conducted in fish markets in Myanmar have not noted any individuals (A. Maung unpubl. data 2020). This species was reported from Bangladesh in 2011 and 2014, but there have been no records of landings since 2017. This may be due to the small amount of coral reef area in the Bangladesh Exclusive Economic Zone (A. Haque unpubl data 2020). In India, few Bluespotted Lagoon Rays are caught and landed with no individuals being observed in recent years (K.K. Bineesh unpubl. data 2020).
In the Western Indian Ocean, overall catches reported to FAO have increased over the past 30 years but have levelled off since 1999 suggesting stocks are fully fished. There is concern for serial depletion with the number species landed near-doubling from only 85 in 1971 to 152 reported in 2000 (van der Elst et al. 2005). Artisanal catches are underreported and most small-scale, artisanal, and subsistence coastal fisheries within the Western Indian Ocean are considered to be fully- or overexploited, especially where they are found close to population centres. Over the last ten years, the number of underexploited fisheries in the coastal zone has tended to decline and such fisheries are now an exception (FAO 2006, Pierce et al. 2008).
Global climate change has already resulted in large-scale coral bleaching events with increasing frequency causing worldwide reef degradation since 1997. Almost all warm-water coral reefs are projected to suffer significant losses of area and local extinctions, even if global warming is limited to 1.5 ºC (IPCC Report 2019).
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
Comments
Please, sign in to leave a comment
Continue with a social account — yours will be created automatically.
