Growth, productivity, and relative extinction risk of a data-sparse devil ray.

ABSTRACT: Devil rays (Mobula spp.) face intensifying fishing pressure to meet the ongoing international demand for gill plates. The paucity of information on growth, mortality, and fishing effort for devil rays make quantifying population growth rates and extinction risk challenging. Furthermore, unlike manta rays (Manta spp.), devil rays have not been listed on CITES. Here, we use a published size-at-age dataset for the Spinetail Devil Ray (Mobula japanica), to estimate somatic growth rates, age at maturity, maximum age, and natural and fishing mortality. We then estimate a plausible distribution of the maximum intrinsic population growth rate (r_max) and compare it to 95 other chondrichthyans. We find evidence that larger devil ray species have low somatic growth rate, low annual reprodu

SUBMITTER: Pardo SA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5034314 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature