FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



77 



Figure 33. — Cow-nosed ray (Rhinoptera bonasus), about 22 inches wide, Newport, Rhode Island. 



Schroeder. Drawing by E. N. Fischer. 



From Bigelow and 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — The cow-nosed 

 ray has even less claim than the sting ray to be 

 called a Gulf of Maine fish, for while schools of 

 them appear occasionally near Woods Hole where 



145 of them were taken in the fish traps in one 

 day on one occasion, and while it is recorded from 

 Nantucket, it has never been seen, actually, east 

 or north of the elbow of Cape Cod. 



DEVIL RAYS. FAMILY MOBULIDAE 



The devil rays, like the sting rays (p. 74) and 

 cow-nosed rays (p. 76) have the pectoral fins 

 interrupted along the sides of the head close behind 

 the eyes. But they differ very noticeably from 

 the others mentioned above in the shape of the 

 anterior parts of the pectorals, for these are in the 

 form of two separate narrow ear-like fins, set 

 vertically and curving forward from the front of 

 the head. They are further unique among skates 

 and rays in the fact that they feed on small 

 pelagic animals, which they sift, by a complex 

 sieve-like modification of their gill arches, out of 

 the water that is gulped in by the mouth and 

 passed out via the gill clefts. Some of them are 

 the largest of the rays and among the largest of 



fishes. Being tropical-subtropical in nature they 

 have no real place in the fish fauna of our Gulf, 

 but Manta, the largest of them all, has been known 

 to reach Georges Bank as a stray from warmer 

 latitudes. 



Devil ray Manta birostris (Donndorff) 1798 



Bigelow and Schroeder, 1953, p. 502. 



Description.- — The so-called cephahc fins of the 

 devil ray, pointing forward, give it so distinctive 

 an appearance that it could not be confused with 

 any other fish, except for some other member of its 

 own family. And it is marked off from all others 

 of these that are known in the Atlantic by the 



