Pelagic Stingray - Human Interactions

Human Interactions

The pelagic stingray is not aggressive and rarely encountered because of its habitat preferences, but its very long tail spine demands extreme caution be exercised in handling it. It has been responsible for two known fatalities: a worker on a tuna longliner who was impaled by a captured ray, and another fishery worker who succumbed to tetanus days after being stung. This species has been kept in public aquariums for almost a century.

The meat and cartilage of the pelagic stingray are sometimes utilized, for example in Indonesia, but for the most part this species is considered worthless and discarded when caught. Susceptible to longlines, gillnets, purse seines, and bottom trawls, it is captured incidentally in large numbers throughout its range. Rays caught on longlines suffer high mortality, as fishers are wary of being stung and remove the rays from the hooks by smashing them against the side of the boat, causing severe damage to the mouth and jaws. The extent of this bycatch has yet to be quantified. Regardless, surveys in the Pacific suggest that pelagic stingray numbers have increased since the 1950s, possibly due to commercial fisheries depleting the dominant predators in the ecosystem, such as sharks and tuna. The lack of population declines, coupled with its wide distribution and high reproductive rate, has led the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to list this species under Least Concern. Recent research has been conducted into reducing pelagic stingray bycatch on longlines by switching to larger and/or "C"-shaped hooks.