Age, growth, and intrinsic sensitivity of Endangered Spinetail Devil Ray (Mobula mobular) and Bentfin Devil Ray (M. thurstoni) in the Indian Ocean.

Devil rays (Mobula spp.) are caught in fisheries across the Indian Ocean, with reports of significant recent declines in catch and sightings. Globally, the few populations studied have extremely low population growth rates due to low fecundity and long reproductive cycles, making them highly vulnerable to overfishing. To allow for assessment of the current sustainability of devil ray catch in the Indian Ocean, we provide estimates of age using the caudal vertebrae; somatic growth using a Bayesian, multi-model approach; maximum intrinsic rate of population increase (r _max ); and fishing mortality for Endangered Spinetail Devil Ray (Mobula mobular) and Bentfin Devil Ray (M. thurstoni) sampled from small-scale fisheries catch in Indonesia, Kenya, and Pakistan. The oldest individuals of Spinetail Devil Ray (n = 79) and Bentfin Devil Ray (n = 59) were 17.5 and six years, respectively. Both species had relatively low growth coefficients (k = 0.05 and g = 0.19 year^-1, respectively), with the von Bertalanffy and logistic models providing the best fitting growth models, and low r _max (0.109 and 0.107 year^-1, respectively) indicating that they are highly sensitive to overexploitation. Fishing mortality F estimates (0.16 and 0.18 year^-1, respectively) were higher than r _max and exploitation ratio E (0.77 and 0.80, respectively) were higher than an optimum value of 0.5 for biological sustainability for both species, suggesting that the fisheries catches of the species are unsustainable. We demonstrate an approach to assess data-poor species and apply this to two Indian Ocean devil ray species. The results highlight the urgent need for better management actions to reduce the catch of all devil rays to prevent species extinction and aid in population recovery.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00227-024-04564-6.