Stingrays are commonly encountered in coastal waters and beach settings, with welfare considerations for wild stingrays and safety considerations for humans sharing their habitats.
Stingray welfare in human interaction contexts spans from individual stress events at touch pools to population-level depletion from targeted fishing. Touch pool stingrays used for public interaction are subjected to repeated handling by visitors who may not follow handling guidelines, creating chronic stress events for individual animals housed in inadequate environments. Wild stingrays that are stepped on and use their defensive barb experience the acute stress of a perceived predation event; preventive shuffling reduces this stress by providing warning that allows escape. The fishing of stingrays for traditional medicine — particularly for liver oil and meat — depletes populations of species whose low reproductive rates make them vulnerable to overfishing. Welfare considerations for stingrays are genuine even if their sentience status is less certain than for vertebrates with more complex brains.