The thorny skate is a species of fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

 in Rajidae family. It mainly lives near the bottom of the coastline of North Atlantic Ocean in depths ranging from 20 to 1000 metres and temperatures from 1 to 10 degrees Celsius. It was also located in Lake Melville

Lake Melville

Lake Melville is a saltwater tidal extension of Hamilton Inlet on the Labrador coast in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Comprising 3,069 square kilometres, and stretching 140 kilometres inland to Happy Valley-Goose Bay, it forms part of the largest estuary in the province,...

, near Goose Bay, Labrador

Labrador

Labrador is the distinct, northerly region of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It comprises the mainland portion of the province, separated from the island of Newfoundland by the Strait of Belle Isle...

. River

River

A river is a natural watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, a lake, a sea, or another river. In a few cases, a river simply flows into the ground or dries up completely before reaching another body of water. Small rivers may also be called by several other names, including...

s empty into the lake and the lake bottom is mostly made up of sand. Thorny skates have been caught in this lake

Lake

A lake is a body of relatively still fresh or salt water of considerable size, localized in a basin, that is surrounded by land. Lakes are inland and not part of the ocean and therefore are distinct from lagoons, and are larger and deeper than ponds. Lakes can be contrasted with rivers or streams,...

 in the 1980s by ice fishermen when outside temperatures were -30 degrees C.

Species Description

The length of its body and tail is generally slightly less than 1 meter and width is about half a meter. Its underside is smooth, but the upper side is, as the name suggest, very rough with many small thorns all over and 13-17 larger ones in line from the back of the head to end of the tail. The top side is brown with possibly black spots and the underside is white. It has a hard, roughly triangular snout and a tail, which is shorter than its body. It eats crustaceans, small fishes and worms. It produces egg capsules, which are 3.4-8.9 cm long and 2.3-6.8 cm wide, which hatch outside the body. It was originally named Raja radiata.

Conservation status

Thorny skate are taken as bycatch in some fisheries. It is a U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service

National Marine Fisheries Service

The National Marine Fisheries Service is a United States federal agency. A division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Commerce, NMFS is responsible for the stewardship and management of the nation's living marine resources and their habitat within the...

 Species of Concern. Species of Concern are those species about which the U.S. Government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , pronounced , like "noah", is a scientific agency within the United States Department of Commerce focused on the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere...

, National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), has some concerns regarding status and threats, but for which insufficient information is available to indicate a need to list the species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.