Endangered
Winter skate
Leucoraja ocellata
Winter skate is a shark or ray in the family Rajidae (order Rajiformes) — Leucoraja ocellata, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
Winter skates are light brown and have small dark spots along the dorsal side of their body. L. Ocellata usually have one to four ocelli, eye-like markings, on the upper surface of the disk, that each have a dark brown center and are pale around the edge. The lower surface is usually white with irregular light brown blotches.
In males, 50% maturity occurs at a total length of 730 mm at 11 years old.
Range and habitat
This skate can be found in the northwest Atlantic Ocean, ranging from North of the Gulf of St. Winter skates prefer sand and gravel habitats. The local populations of the winter skate are not evenly distributed.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Winter skate consume a variety of prey throughout their lifetimes.
In crisis
Lawrence population. The Eastern Scotian Shelf and Newfoundland population, and the Western Scotian Shelf population. L. Ocellata is considered endangered by the IUCN, due to human and natural causes, among them fishing and predation.
Winter 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 Winter skate, Wikidata item Q2658107. 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.
