Efficacy of 2-phenoxyethanol for elasmobranchs both rays and sharks exposed to a range of concentrations (0.1-0.3ml/L) was evaluated. Anaesthesia is an effective method to minimise stress or physical damage caused during handling, transport, tag placement, health and disease surveillance and collection of biological samples in both the clinical and field settings. Our understanding and application of anaesthesia is lacking for all elasmobranch species and widely under utilised due to this lack of knowledge. Current practices for elasmobranch anesthesia include isoeugenol (Aqui-S) and Tricaine methanesulphonate (MS-222) which have anecdotally caused periods of hyper-reactivity, prolonged induction times and varying depths of anaesthesia. In this present study, we determined the effective concentration, average induction and recovery times and water quality alterations of 2-phenoxyethanol. Our findings show that 2-phenoxyethanol is a superior anesthetic option for a variety of elasmobranch species that can be used as an anesthetic by veterinarians, field biologists and laboratory researchers to aid in handling for medical procedures, research purposes and field data sampling.