Plans emerged for a field trip to discover more about the enigmatic rays, which can grow to almost three metres and give birth to live young.

Local Leon Deschamps, of the Shark Ark conservation project, who had worked to save the stranded rays during the stranding, lent his boat for the research and connected Lear with Malgana Indigenous rangers.

Deschamps said their performance, particularly of Matthew Cross, who had “probably the most incredible ecological knowledge of the bay that exists”, drove home the advantages of engaging with traditional owners.

“For a start [Matthew] wasn’t afraid of crash-tackling the guitarfish which is like taking a rollercoaster ride on a sandpaper conveyor belt,” Deschamps said.

“He is a hunter, but it’s also the knowledge of where they will be, time and location, where the babies are, where the winds and tides and currents are each day to maximise field time.”

Lear said to save the guitarfish, scientists needed to know what affected them in different environments.

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Her other areas of study are helping to inform conservation work.

Knowing how connected the populations are along the north-west coast and across to Indonesia can give an idea of how vulnerable they are.

Populations that are genetically connected and able to inter-breed are more robust, whereas smaller more genetically isolated populations are more vulnerable to fishing pressure.

Knowing how they use their habitat – whether they stay in one spot or are transient – can inform whether marine protected areas might be effective.

The Shark Ark team have sent the guitarfish footage to Fisheries Minister Don Punch to promote their campaign for a marine sanctuary in the region.

Murdoch PhD candidate Jack Ingelbrecht said this was the most extensive parasite work ever done on the guitarfish.

All three known species of dermopristis belong to a comparatively new genus, only described by western science just over a decade ago.

The other two are also host-specific and live on the largetooth (freshwater) sawfish, and the green sawfish.

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“Our knowledge of extinction is only regarding species that have been catalogued,” he said.

“It’s estimated that so many more have gone extinct that we have never described.”

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