The Smooth Stingray, Dasyatis brevicaudata, grows up to 2m across and 4.3m in length making it the largest of all Australian stingrays. This fellow who we dubbed ‘Mr Ray’ was at least 1.5m across and was the highlight of our first dive in Edithburgh last Saturday. Mr Ray was quite curious about us and buzzed us a few times during the dive usually by sneaking up from behind and scaring the daylights out of us!
This first dive set the scene for a great underwater photography course with Mark, Bel, Peter, Jennifer and myself. With the recent hot weather we have been having here in South Australia the water temperature is way up. 25 degC made for almost tropical diving and all of us lamented our limited air and camera battery life. We all could have stayed underwater the entire weekend!
Until the next post, take care out there and keep diving ( if that’s what you do! ) …Robert 🙂
Photo: Robert Rath C7070 1/90s at f/2.8 ISO80 Inon UWL100-28AD Lens, Natural Light
A gorgeous Ray photographed by a gorgeous Robert! 🙂
It was even better close up guys. What an awesome photo!!!
hello, i was out snorkelling at beaumauris the other day and i think we came across the smooth ray.. it was at bottom and mostly buried , however knowing their shape i would of said it was at keast 1.5 mtr wide.. have seen it swimming there before. I told my girlfriend it was there, asked if she seen it on our approach before i stopped her going further as i had nearly swam directly over the top of it in a depth of less than 500 mm.. glad i seen it first! ” can you see it?can you see its air intakes, its eys sockets etc?” she replyied with little enthusiasm, i looked again , it was still resting, so i moved us both to within two mtrs and pointed it out. When i lifted my face from the water to ask her if she had seen it this time.. her expression told a thousand words.. it was priceless. i have dived with scuba and snorkell for years and they always blow me away, my girlfriend had never seen one like this before, that is resting in shallow water like a mine ready to go off. We both seen we think the same one swimming a couple of weeks before.. is it the same species?Dasyatis brevicaudata
Thanks Aidan for your great story! It is always wonderful to hear about these kinds of experiences in the ocean and it reminds me of how privileged we are to see beautiful creatures like these in their world.
I am not certain which ray the two of you saw but it will either have been a smooth stingray (Dasyatis brevicaudata) or a black stingray (Dasyatis thetidis). They are very similar and are often confused as one for the other. The smooth stingray has small white spots on the flaps beside the head while the black stingray has a longer tail and sharp thorns along the dorsal midline.
Keep on diving!
Cheers,
Robert Rath