Endangered
Bottlenose skate
Rostroraja alba
Bottlenose skate is a shark or ray in the family Rajidae (order Rajiformes) — Rostroraja alba, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
The snout is broad-based, abruptly tapering to a protruding sharp point and covered with small, sharp thorns. The adults have about 6 thorns around the inner margin of the orbit and 16–30 mid-dorsal and 17–29 lateral thorns on the tail. The skin is rough in adults except for a smooth patch in the center of the disc. The underside is prickly except for smooth patches on the snout.
Most bottlenose skates are 60–150 cm (24–59 in) long, with maximum recorded lengths of 230 cm (91 in) for males and 202 cm (80 in) for females.
Range and habitat
The bottlenose skate is found along the coastlines of the eastern Atlantic Ocean, from southwest Ireland to South Africa and extends into the southwestern Indian Ocean to Mozambique. Du Buit (1974) reported that it is more prevalent in rocky habitats. It is a benthic fish native to the coastal eastern Atlantic Ocean.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
The egg cases are oblong in shape, with stiff pointed horns at each corners and the larger horns flattened.
In crisis
Due to overfishing, it has been depleted or extirpated in many parts of its former range in the northeastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea, and is now endangered.
Bottlenose skate is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Bottlenose skate, Wikidata item Q603663. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
