Beachgoers watch stranded sea creature give birth in first-of-its-kind sighting (2025)

Beachgoers in Spain found themselves watching a first-of-its-kind sight after an endangered sea creature washed ashore and gave birth to a “clumsy” baby. The “rare” and “unusual” event offered scientists “valuable information.”

Beachgoers in Calafell spotted a stingray “swimming closely to shore,” then getting stranded on the afternoon of May 12, according to a study published April 15 in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Biology of Fishes.

A rescue team arrived to help the stingray, identified as a spinetail devil ray. Bystanders noticed “a sequence of small spasms” and “a whitish liquid, presumably uterine milk,” coming from the stingray, then spotted a baby, the study said.

The stranded spinetail devil ray had given birth to a pup, “apparently without any complications,” researchers said. A photo shows the mother and newborn, which measured about 4 feet across.

Rescuers moved the mother stingray “to deeper waters” and it “quickly showed signs of recovery,” the study said.

“The pup exhibited clumsy and exaggerated swimming movements,” staying close to its mother at first then “occasionally stranding” itself,” researchers said. Rescuers eventually moved the pup farther away from the shore and it swam “towards the open sea.”

Spinetail devil rays, scientifically known as Mobula mobular, “are slow-growing, large-bodied” stingrays typically found in “offshore, deep waters” around the world, according to the United Nation’s Convention on Migratory Species. The species is considered endangered because it is “particularly vulnerable to over-exploitation in fisheries and extremely slow to recover from depletion.”

Researchers also recorded a second sighting of a pregnant spinetail devil ray off Palamós, the study said. Fishermen reported accidentally catching the stingray while trawling on July 1. The crew immediately headed back to port but, while on the way, the stingray “gave birth to a stillborn pup before dying.”

Sightings of pregnant spinetail devil rays are “scarcely documented,” researchers said. The encounters at Calafell and off Palamós are the “first documented cases of pregnant females giving birth in the Spanish coast of the Mediterranean Sea.”

Researchers described the sightings as “rare events” of “stress-induced” stingray births and concluded “this region of the western Mediterranean Sea may potentially host an important reproductive area for the spinetail devil ray.”

Calafell and Palamós are coastal cities in northeastern Spain and a roughly 115-mile drive apart, with Barcelona in the middle.

The research team included Pol Carrasco-Puig, Ana Colmenero, Silvia Giralt, Lucía Garrido Sánchez, Jhulyana López-Caro, Ramón Ruiz-Jarillo, Daniel Fernandez-Guiberteau, Jordi Ruiz-Olmo and Claudio Barría.

The team thanked “present beachgoers for acting appropriately during the spinetail devil ray stranding and for sharing their images and information,” the “fishermen of Palamós for their collaboration” and the “veterinary team of the CRAM Foundation (Conservation and Recovery of Marine Animals) for their assistance.”