The smalleye stingray is a study in contrasts and surprise. It has a wingspan that stretches greater than seven feet, yet its eyes are the size of raisins. While most stingrays avoid humans, the smalleye appears to be inquisitive, sometimes swimming within feet of scuba divers. And despite being the world’s largest oceanic stingray, it is very rarely spotted alive, and almost nothing is known about it.

Before the early 2000s, there were only a couple verified live sightings of smalleye stingrays (Megatrygon microps). But in the past 15 years, biologist Andrea Marshall and colleagues have spotted 70 individuals off the coast of Mozambique, and they’ve catalogued some of these observations in the world’s first study on the