{"id":503,"date":"2016-10-24T10:13:07","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T09:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/saveourseas.com\/sosf-darros-research-centre\/?p=503"},"modified":"2016-10-24T13:52:16","modified_gmt":"2016-10-24T12:52:16","slug":"mating-stingrays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/saveourseas.com\/sosf-darros-research-centre\/mating-stingrays\/","title":{"rendered":"Mating Stingrays in St Joseph Atoll?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"the-content\"><p><div class=\"fluid-width-video-wrapper\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/188263323?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/p>\n<p>Walking in the shallow waters of St Joseph Atoll, it soon becomes clear the area has <a href=\"https:\/\/saveourseas.com\/project\/a-stingrays-story\/\">an abundant ray population.<\/a> Tiny mangrove whiptail rays,\u00a0\u00a0<i>Himantura granulata, <\/i>dart to and fro. Additionally, large adults frequent both the shallows and deeper waters of the lagoon. So while we&#8217;ve inferred that the atoll environment is likely a notable\u00a0nursery area for this species, we recently watched behaviour that suggests the Atoll may also be a critical area for other phases of this species life cycle. The occurrence of mating stingrays raise a number of questions.<\/p>\n<h5>Mating Stingrays: St Joseph Atoll as a breeding ground?<\/h5>\n<p>Could St Joseph Atoll be an significant breeding area for mangrove whiptail rays? Recently, while in the field for targeted research\u00a0on <a href=\"https:\/\/saveourseas.com\/project\/baby-sharks-sharing-space\/\">juvenile sharks<\/a>,\u00a0we were witness to an aggregation of large mangrove whiptail rays in\u00a0shallow water. Upon close inspection, the largest of the rays lacked the obvious claspers apparent on what appeared to be her six male suitors. Indeed, the group of rays moved quite close to two of us in the water,\u00a0throughout\u00a0we kept a sharp\u00a0lookout for large lemon sharks lurking in the murky water. The only explanation\u00a0\u00a0we could come up with for the behaviour was that these were mating stingrays. The rays, unbothered by our close proximity, stuck around long enough for one of us\u00a0to\u00a0run back to camp to grab\u00a0the drone.<\/p>\n<p>By the time we launched the drone, there were only two males left following the female. Moments before the video starts, it appeared as though one of them coupled with the female. The rays subsequently\u00a0each travel their separate ways, but not after giving all of us a show to remember.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Walking in the shallow waters of St Joseph Atoll, it soon becomes clear the area has an abundant ray population. Tiny mangrove whiptail rays,\u00a0\u00a0Himantura granulata, dart to and fro. Additionally, large adults frequent both the shallows and deeper waters of the lagoon. So while we&#8217;ve inferred that the atoll environment is likely a notable\u00a0nursery area [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":112,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.1 (Yoast SEO v27.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Mating Stingrays in St Joseph Atoll? - SOSF D&#039;Arros Research Centre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Could St Joseph Atoll be an significant breeding area for mangrove whiptail rays? 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