Its upper surface has a speckled color pattern consisting of black spots and brownish reticulations on a light yellow to brown background.

Favoring soft-bottomed habitats, the peppered maskray is a bottom-dwelling predator consuming mainly crustaceans (particularly caridean shrimp) and polychaete worms.

Although the peppered maskray is a frequent bycatch of bottom trawl fisheries, it is still common and significant portions of its population appear to lie within unfished waters.

[3] Phylogenetic analysis using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA has found that the peppered and painted maskrays are sister species.

[4] The peppered maskray has a thin, diamond-shaped pectoral fin disc roughly 1.2 times wider than long, with slightly concave leading margins and narrowly rounded outer corners.

This species is light yellow to brown above, with a darker reticulated pattern that may vary from faint to obvious, all overlaid by numerous black spots.

The tail has a pattern of saddles or bands behind the sting; the tip is white and the ventral fin fold darkens to almost black posteriorly.

It also consumes polychaete worms and amphipods, and rarely penaeid prawns, molluscs, and small bony fishes.

[1][5] Reproduction in the peppered maskray is viviparous; like other stingrays, the developing embryos are initially nourished by yolk and later by histotroph ("uterine milk") provided by the mother.

Despite this mortality, the NPF is not believed to have negatively affected the local population because its operational area does not include the waters where this species is most abundant.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed this species under Least Concern, because it remains common and its range includes several Marine Protected Areas.