SPARSELY spotted stingaree

9/2/2018

Source: Julian Finn / Museum Victoria.

The sparsely spotted stingaree, Urolophus paucimaculatus, is pale grey in color with white spots on their dorsal side and have a dark margin around their disc. They are found along southern Australia on sandy bottoms and in seagrass. They are also known as Dixon's stingaree, and the white-spotted stingaree.

It may look like the common stingaree, Trygonoptera testacea, but a quick way to tell the difference between these two is that the sparsely spotted stingaree lacks that signature Batman-like mask around the eyes.

#Finfact: like other stingarees, they have a serrated spine that is venomous and if not handled properly can inflict a painful wound. If you aren't in southern Australia, you won't find them! They're only endemic from the northern New South Wales state to about the Western Australia state, including through Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia. Here they are spotted in shallow bays, harbours, inlets and even as deep as 150 metres (along the continental shelf).

Reaching lengths of up to 57 cm this carnivore loves to munch on crustaceans, polychaete worms and a variety of small fishes. Juveniles tend to stick to eating small crustaceans. Juveniles mean a momma stingaree and a daddy stingaree got together around early to mid-summer (in the Southern Hemisphere) and got it on. The females then give birth to pups in late autumn (maximum of 6 pups). Their gestation lasts about 10-12 months. These stingarees are often caught as bycatch in seine and trawl fisheries in their range but aren't seen on the market. The IUCN has assessed them as Least Concern (LC).

WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT THIS ANIMAL?

GLOSSARY

Bycatch: The part of a fishery’s catch that is made up of non-target species.
Endemic: Native to a specific region or environment and not occurring naturally anywhere else.
IUCN: International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Trawl fisheries: Fisheries that pull a fishing net through the water behind one or more boats.