Endemic to eastern Australia, it typically inhabits shallow, mangrove-lined tidal rivers, estuaries, and bays in southern Queensland and New South Wales.

Once common, this species has apparently declined across much of its range, likely from a combination of habitat degradation, mortality from commercial and recreational fishing, and persecution by shellfish farmers.

[3] This species was formally described by Australian ichthyologist James Douglas Ogilby in a 1908 volume of Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland, based on a specimen collected from the Brisbane River.

[4] The estuary stingray has a diamond-shaped pectoral fin disc about as wide as long, with gently convex anterior margins and broadly rounded outer corners.

There are wide patches of small dermal denticles with flattened crowns between the eyes and over the middle of the back, along with a midline row of enlarged thorns that become progressively longer until they reach the base of the sting.

[5] The range of the estuary stingray spans approximately 1,700 km (1,100 mi) along Australia's eastern coast, from Repulse Bay in Queensland to the Hacking River in New South Wales.

[9] Despite its reputation for preying voraciously on oysters and other farmed shellfish, the estuary stingray's diet in fact consists mainly of crustaceans and polychaete worms.

[7] Known parasites of the estuary stingray include the tapeworm Shirleyrhynchus aetobatidis,[10] the nematode Echinocephalus overstreeti[11] and the monogeneans Heterocotyle chin,[12] Empruthotrema dasyatidis[13] and Neoentobdella cribbi.

[15] Courtship, in which the male follows the female and bites her disc, has been observed at night in water approximately 80 cm (31 in) deep in Hays Inlet from July to October.

This species is captured incidentally by commercial bottom trawl and gillnet fisheries; bycatch mortality is exacerbated by the practice of "spiking", in which the ray's cranium is pierced with a metal bar or sharpened stick so as to move it.

Its range encompasses some of the most urbanized areas in Australia, where there is extensive land reclamation, water pollution, and construction of flood mitigation barriers on rivers.

[7] The estuary stingray's diminished population and susceptibility to multiple threats have led the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to assess it as Near Threatened.

[7] The Queensland government has listed the estuary stingray on the Back on Track species prioritisation framework, to facilitate the development of conservation measures.