flagellum, Raja Bloch [M. E.] & Schneider [J. G.] 1801:361, Pl. 73 [M. E. Blochii, Systema Ichthyologiae; ref. 471] Coast of Coromandel, India. Syntypes: ZMB 7845 (stuffed), 31560 (1, stuffed). Type catalog: Paepke & Schmidt 1988:180 [ref. 21041], Paepke 1999:104 [ref. 24282]. •Synonym of Aetobatus narinari (Euphrasen 1790) -- (Dor 1984:20 [ref. 29757]). •Valid as Aetobatus flagellum (Bloch & Schneider 1801) -- (McEachran & Séret 1990:68 [ref. 19318], Talwar & Jhingran 1991:50 [ref. 20764], Suzuki & Hosokawa 1994:2 [ref. 24339], Shimizu & Hatooka 1997:2 [ref. 24377], Compagno & Last 1999:1515 [ref. 24637], Vossoughi & Vosoughi 1999:305 [ref. 25467], Compagno 1999:497 [ref. 25589], Nakabo 2000:185 [ref. 25086], Compagno in Randall & Lim 2000:583 [ref. 25122], Nakabo 2002:185 [ref. 26001], Sujatha 2002:157 [ref. 26899], Manilo & Bogorodsky 2003:S94 [ref. 27377], Bonfil & Abdallah 2004:53 [ref. 27735], Schwartz 2008:39 [ref. 36773], White et al. 2010:141 [ref. 30856], Last el al. 2010:242 [ref. 32461], Yamashita et al. 2012:136 [ref. 32408], White & Moore 2013:201 [ref. 33040], White et al. 2013:1 [ref. 33115], White 2014:149 [ref. 33490], Psomadakis et al. 2015:105 [ref. 34104], Weigmann 2016:147 [ref. 34211] see remarks, White & Naylor 2016:436 [ref. 34575], White & Last 2016:727 [ref. 35016], Ali et al. 2018:305 [ref. 36183], Jawad et al. 2018:97 [ref. 36262], Eagderi et al. 2019:12 [ref. 37020], Sales et al. 2019:[4] [ref. 36645], Bineesh et al. 2020:26 [ref. 37641], Kim et al. 2020:49 [ref. 39118], Psomadakis et al. 2020:213 [ref. 37272], Haroon & Kibria 2021:122 [ref. 39241], Carvalho & Soares 2022:624 [ref. 39676], Hsu et al. 2022:4 [ref. 39567]). Current status: Valid as Aetobatus flagellum (Bloch & Schneider 1801). Aetobatidae. Distribution: Indo-West Pacific: Persian Gulf east to Indonesia and Malaysia. (Not Eastern Atlantic; Japanese records may belong to a separate species on ref. 33490 [now named narutobiei]). Habitat: brackish, marine.