A very rare albino stingray with a nearly all white color has been spotted off the southern coast of Australia. As far as aberrant ‘fish’ go, albino marine fish, let alone elasmobranchs including sharks and rays, are about as close as it gets to seeing a ‘white buffalo’ in the ocean.
The specimen in focus is a smooth short-tail stingray, Dasyatis brevicaudata, a species that normally grows to 13 feet long. But Crystal, as it has been dubbed by local divers, has had part of her long tail cut off by some unknown accident. But what she lacks in overall length Crystal the albino stingray makes up for with an angelic presence, no doubt bolstered by flapping her stark white, wing-like pectoral fins.
This is not the first albino stingray in recent times, with an albino Raja stingray being sighted in the UK Channel Islands a handful of years ago. But that lil ghostly ray pup doesn’t hold a candle to the fully grown and stark white coloration of Crystal, who made several apparitions at Blairgowrie Marina, on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, Australia to take advantage of the annual mass moulting of delicious spider crabs. [Caters]
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