Arctic skate

The Arctic skate (Amblyraja hyperborea) is a species of fish in the family Rajidae. It lives near the seabed between 140 and 2,500 m deep in the Arctic Ocean and waters around Canada and northern and north-western Europe, in the northern Pacific Ocean, and in waters surrounding Antarctica and New Zealand.^[2]

Arctic skate
Conservation status
Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Chondrichthyes
Subclass:	Elasmobranchii
Order:	Rajiformes
Family:	Rajidae
Genus:	Amblyraja
Species:	A. hyperborea
Binomial name
Amblyraja hyperborea (Collett, 1879)

The Arctic skate is about 1 m long and is gray-brown with large dark spots. Its underside is white with dark patterns. It has thorns in line from back to near the end of its tail. It is oviparous; its eggs are capsules with hard horns on each corner. It eats all sorts of small animals at the bottom of the sea.^[2]

Taxonomy

This species was first described by Robert Collett in 1879 and named Raja hyperborea.^[3]

Conservation

The Arctic skate is classified as being of "least concern" by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.^[1]

In New Zealand, the Department of Conservation has classified the Arctic skate as "Not Threatened" under the New Zealand Threat Classification System.^[4]