The sole two specimens of the Florida torpedo were caught over the western Grand Cayman Bank in November 1960 by the Silver Bay, which was conducting exploratory shrimp trawling on behalf of the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (a predecessor of the National Marine Fisheries Service). The species was described in a 1962 issue of Bulletin of Marine Science of the Gulf and Caribbean by Harvey Bullis, who named it after his colleague and mentor William Anderson. The larger, long adult male specimen was designated the holotype. This species belongs to the subgenus Torpedo, and is most similar to the New Zealand torpedo (T. fairchildi), the panther electric ray (T. panthera), and the black-spotted torpedo (T. fuscomaculata).
