Blackish stingray

The blackish stingray, Hemitrygon navarrae, is a little-known stingray of the family Dasyatidae found in the northwestern Pacific Ocean off mainland China and Taiwan. Franz Steindachner described it in 1892 as Trygon navarrae from a 32 centimetre male collected at Shanghai. It lives on the bottom in coastal waters of the Yellow, Bohai and East China Seas and has been recorded in the estuary of the Yellow River. The body is a plain dark brown above and whitish below, with a diamond-shaped pectoral disc almost as long as wide that reaches about 38 centimetres across. The whip-like tail carries a stinging spine, three large tubercles in front of it and fin folds above and below. Little is known of its natural history, though copepod and monogenean parasites have been recorded, and it is presumed to bear live young like its relatives. It is taken as bycatch by bottom trawlers and is one of the three stingray species most commonly sold as food in China, and the IUCN has assessed it as vulnerable.