A heavy round stingray of Indo-Pacific reefs, resting under ledges by day and hunting in numbers on shallow rock at night.
To about 1.8 m across the disc, dark grey-brown mottled and speckled with paler marks, thick-bodied, with a broad tail carrying a low fin fold underneath. It is the large round stingray of Indo-Pacific reefs and it is heavier-built than the whiprays.
It rests under ledges and on sand by day, often several in one cave, and feeds at night on molluscs and crustaceans. At Cocos it is one of the animals that makes a night dive: they hunt in numbers over the shallow rock and are largely indifferent to torches. It carries one or two venomous barbs at the tail base and uses them only when trodden on or cornered.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.