414 Memoir Sears Foundation for Marine Research 



West Africa,'* but without positive evidence of specific identity. It is represented in 

 South African, Indian, East Indian, Australian, and East Asiatic waters by a close 

 relative, or relatives (see discussion, p. 4 1 2). 



Details of Occurrence.''^ Published records that are positively identifiable as to 

 species, combined with the geographic distribution of the specimens we have examined 

 (see Study Material, p. 408), establish the presence of G. micrura near Rio de Janeiro, 

 Brazil; French Guiana; Surinam (Dutch Guiana); Trinidad; Gulf of Campeche, 

 Mexico; Texas, including the vicinity of Corpus ChristI, offing of Aransas Bay, and 

 Galveston; Grande Isle, Barataria Bay and its offing, and Main Island, Louisiana; 

 Apalachicola, Tampa, Captiva Bay, and vicinity of Smyrna, Florida; Charleston, South 

 Carolina; the Cape Lookout-Beaufort region. North Carolina; Chesapeake Bay and 

 neighboring outer coasts of Virginia and Maryland; Cape May County and Sandy 

 Hook Bay, New Jersey; and Woods Hole in southern Massachusetts, which marks the 

 extreme boundary of its known range. It is probable that most of the reports of 

 Pteroplatea maclura from other Texas-Louisiana-Florida localities (Galveston, Cameron, 

 Lemon Bay near Englewood, Sarasota Bay, Dry Tortugas, Indian River) were also 

 based on specimens of G. micrura, for this species is known to occur much more fre- 

 quently along the coasts of the United States than does G. altavela. 



Published statements as to the numerical abundance of G. micrura, added to our 

 own observations, suggest that its center of abundance lies in the northern part of its 

 range. Thus, knowledge of its presence on the Brazilian coast appears to rest on two 

 or three well identified specimens only, and it is described as much less common in 

 French Guiana coastal waters than is the Long-tailed Ray, Dasyaiis say. But it has been 

 classed as fairly common near Galveston, Texas, whence we have received 13 specimens. 

 Although only two were taken among 144,000 other fishes trawled in Louisiana waters," 

 it is common enough there locally to be advertised as "available in quantities."" 



Neither the printed record nor our own experience suggest any concentrations of 

 them along the Florida Coast. But they are reported as common in the vicinity of 

 Beaufort and of Cape Lookout, North Carolina. At Lynnhaven Roads in the lower part 

 of Chesapeake Bay, where we have seen many hundreds taken, 40 individuals are often 

 caught in a single pound net during a 24-hour period. But to the northward all of the 

 published records of it have been based on stray specimens only. 



Synonyms and Atlantic References:" 



Raja micrura Bloch and Schneider, Syst. IchthyoL, 1801: 360 (diagn., color, Surinam [Dutch Guiana]). ''' 



74. For West African references, nominally to G. micrura, see Fowler (Bull. Amer. Mus. nat. Hist., 70 [i], 1936: 132). 

 The accompanying specific description was for a specimen from the Middle Atlantic United States. 



75. Many of the reports of Butterfly Rays in the western Atlantic might refer either to the present species or to G. 

 altavela. 



76. Gunter, Publ. Inst. mar. Sci. Texas, i (i), 1945: 23. 77. Carolina Biol. Supply Co., Cat. 20, 1949-1950: 115. 



78. This hst is confined to Atlantic references that seem referable to G. micrura with reasonable assurance, as con- 

 trasted with G. altavela, whether by included evidence of one sort or another or by reference to some previous 

 author. For discussion of the relationship of Pacific and Indian ocean Butterfly Rays of the micrura type to G. 

 micrura of the western Atlantic, see p. 411. 



79. Bloch and Schneider's account of the tail as black- and white-barred ("nigro alboque fasciata") is not in itself con- 



