Purple eagle ray

Australian National Fish Collection, CSIRO

Purple Eagle Ray (Myliobatis hamlyni) is… well, as the name says: purple. But, it can also be a green-grey colour, which mixes into an olive brown on its disc edges. Their underbelly is a creamy colour, while their tail varies from a creamy white to a purple colour. Like other rays, they do have a venomous stinger.

These rays have a broad head with large eyes to help them find their prey. Diet is unknown for these animals, but they are closely related to southern eagle ray (Myliobatis tenuicaudatus) so they may possibly share the same taste in prey. Behind their large eyes are large spiracles. Adult males have a small, blunt thorn over each eye.

A decently sized animal, they can reach up to 59 cm disc with a total length about 100 cm. Their distribution is very poorly known, with only a few specimens being observed around Queensland, New South Wales, and Western Australia all the way up to Japan and Taiwan. They tend to hang out around 120-350 m deep, a unique feature amongst the Myliobatis species; purple eagle rays may also be possibly distributed in Indo-Pacific to South Africa.
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Their reproduction methods are unknown, but being closely related to the southern eagle ray, it may be same or similar. The IUCN has assessed them as Near Threatened (NT).

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glossary

• Bycatch: The part of a fishery’s catch that is made up of non-target species.
• Cannibalism: Eating your own kind.
• Continental shelf: Extends from a continent underwater, resulting in a shallow-water area.
• Continental slope: The steep slope from a continental shelf to the ocean floor; usually around 20 km (12.4 miles) wide and made up of mud and silt substrate. It is an ideal area for deepsea fishing.
• Cosmopolitan: Worldwide distribution.
• Generas: Plural form of genus.
• Genus: A group of organisms ranking above a species and below a family.
• IUCN: International Union for Conservation of Nature.
• Longline fishing: The commercial fishing industry’s version of traditional hook and line fishing.
• Monotypic: Where a genus only has a single species.
• Oophagy: Sometimes called "oviphagy;" when developing embryos feed on unfertilized eggs.
• Pectoral fins: Fins located behind the gills on either side.
• Pup: Give birth to baby sharks (pups).
• Pups: Baby sharks.
• Teleost: Bony fishes.
• Trawl fisheries: Fisheries that pull a fishing net through the water behind one or more boats.
• Viviparous: Eggs hatch inside the female's body and the babies are fed by a placenta which transfers nourishment from the mother to the babies (via an umbilical cord which is connected to the baby shark between the pectoral fins).​

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