common skate

The blue skate, also known as the grey skate, blue-grey skate, and common skate, is a species of cartilaginous fish, a ray, belonging to the family Rajidae, the skates. It was formerly considered to be conspecific with the flapper skate, the combined taxon being known as the common skate. Historically, it was one of the most abundant skates in the northeast Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Despite its name, today it appears to be absent from much of this range. Where previously abundant, fisheries directly targeted this skate and elsewhere it is caught incidentally as bycatch. The former species was uplisted to critically endangered on the IUCN Red List in 2006 and it is protected within the EU.

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