Story at a glance
- A species of ray last seen in 1986 has been rediscovered by marine scientists in Iran.
- More than 367 tentacled butterfly rays were found in the by-catch of nearly 100 shrimp hauls from trawlers operating in the Gulf of Oman and the eastern Persian Gulf.
- Scientists say the only real way to save species like the tentacled butterfly ray is to ban trawling altogether.
A species of ray previously believed to be extinct has been found off the coast of Iran, shocking marine biologists.
Mohsen Rezaie-Atagholipour, a marine biologist at Iran’s Qeshm Environmental Conservation Institute, first made the discovery in 2019, after stumbling upon a peculiar looking ray snagged in a fishing net of Persian Gulf shrimp. The small green ray had two tentacles just below its eyes.
Rezaie-Atagholipour couldn’t believe it. “I found the tentacled butterfly ray,” he told Hakai Magazine this week.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2017 listed the tentacled butterfly ray as critically endangered, and possibly extinct. Before now, the last sighting of one was recorded in 1986, in waters near Pakistan, according to a new study by Rezaie-Atagholipour documenting his discovery.
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Unfortunately, the tentacled butterfly ray found by Rezaie-Atagholipour was dead, but from that initial discovery, he logged 367 more sightings after surveying 96 shrimp hauls from trawlers operating in the Gulf of Oman and the eastern Persian Gulf. The species accounted for nearly 15 percent of all the rays in the by-catch, he found.
“That was very surprising,” he told Hakai, and suspects that the area off southern Iran where most of the rays were found could be the species’ last stronghold.
But the fishing activities that helped scientists make their discovery could also be driving the creature closer to extinction. Rima Jabado, a marine scientist who worked with Rezaie-Atagholipour in rediscovering the ray, found in a separate study that overfishing disproportionately affects species of sharks, chimeras and rays in tropical and subtropical waters, including the northern Indian ocean.
“We have extreme fishing pressure from the number of countries operating here,” she told Hakai. “There’s kind of nowhere to hide.”
Trawlers don’t intentionally pick up rays, but often pick them up as by-catch. Rays typically die before nets are even pulled out of the water.
Rezaie-Atagholipour plans to work with other fishing communities to reduce by-catch rates, but fishermen say the only real solution to saving populations like the tentacled butterfly ray is to ban trawling altogether. As long as trawling continues, many more marine species could disappear for good, they say.
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