Stingrays are cartilaginous fish found in coastal and open ocean environments globally. They face welfare harms from barb removal in tourism contexts, entanglement, and the complex questions around pain perception in elasmobranchs that are increasingly relevant as fish sentience science advances.
Stingray welfare is an emerging area that sits at the frontier of fish sentience science and wildlife tourism ethics. The precautionary principle suggests that procedures causing potential pain — like barb removal — should be scrutinised even in the absence of definitive sentience confirmation. High-density tourist interaction sites, where hundreds of visitors handle stingrays daily, are likely to cause significant stress even if individual handling is gentle. Stress responses in elasmobranchs are well-documented physiologically; repeated, intensive handling compresses the animals' ability to express normal behaviour and may cause chronic stress. Well-managed interaction sites with strict handling guidelines, limited daily interaction numbers, and natural feeding behaviours produce better welfare outcomes than those prioritising visitor volume.