Chilean Devil Rays Found to Be Among the Deepest-Diving Animals in the Ocean

Divers exploring warm waters around the world often encounter Chilean devil rays, gentle marine creatures that can grow up to ten feet long. The rays bask just below the surface, gliding through sunlight-dappled water, oftentimes in groups. Little is known about the striking creatures, however, and marine biologists have always presumed that they live only near the warm, bright surface.

Scientists have just discovered that the rays harbor an impressive secret, however: they regularly undertake epic dives more than a mile deep.

These remarkable dives came as a surprise to researchers who reported the finding today in Nature Communications. In retrospect, they note, the rays’ physiology did hint at this ability.

Chilean devil rays possess a special organ called the retia mirabilia, which is also found in deep-diving species such as great white sharks. In those animals, the veined structure fills with warm blood that exchanges heat between vessel walls. This helps to keep the marine creatures’ brain warm when they descend to freezing depths. But Chilean devil rays, researchers assumed, spent all of their time at the surface. Why would they need such a structure?

To solve the puzzle, an international team of marine biologists attached satellite tags to 15 Chilean devil rays captured off the northwest coast of Africa, near the Azores archipelago. The team monitored the rays’ movements for nine months and found that the animals were tremendously active. They sometimes traversed up to 30 miles of ocean per day, with each covering a distance of up to 2,300 miles over the nine-month period.

Even more impressive, however, was the rays’ diving abilities. They regularly dove below 1,000 feet, with a maximum-recorded depth of 6,062 feet. This means that Chilean devil rays undertake some of the deepest dives ever recorded for marine animals, the team reports.

The journeys into the deep seem to be no sweat for the animals. One individual, for example, dove nearly 4,600 feet six days in a row, and overall, the rays spent more than five percent of their time in deep water.

The deep dives explain the presence of the previously enigmatic retia mirabilia, the team writes. At the depths recorded by the trackers, rays would encounter temperatures as chilly as 37˚F, so the extra flush of warm blood provided by that organ likely makes those dives possible. Additionally, the researchers found that the rays spend more time basking near the water’s warm surface both one hour before and one hour after a deep dive, implying that the animals are preparing for and recovering from encounters with the cold.

The rays aren’t undertaking these dives just for fun, of course. Based on the animals’ movement patterns—oftentimes a quick bee-line descent followed by a slower step-wise ascent—the researchers think they are probably foraging on fish or squid that live well below the surface.

The unexpected findings, the authors write, demonstrate “how little we know” about Chilean devil rays and the role they play in ocean ecosystems. Given that these animals were recently listed as endangered (largely due to a growing demand for their gills by practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine), “this ignorance has significant conservation implications,” the team continues. As with any species, the more we know about them, the better equipped we will be for protecting them—and for knowing what we stand to lose should they disappear. 

Rachel Nuwer | | READ MORE

Rachel Nuwer is a freelance science writer based in Brooklyn.