How to help the UK’s sharks, skates and rays

If you’ve ever spent time snorkelling or scuba diving in the UK, you may have been lucky enough to come across one or more of our native sharks, skates or rays. 

To mark Fintastic Friday, which fell on 8th May this year, we’re going to share some fascinating facts about our sharks, skates and rays. 

Did you know that over 40 species of shark can be found in UK waters, with 21 shark species considered resident to our coastlines? We even get the world’s second largest fish – the basking shark – in various locations during the spring and summer months.

Basking sharks are filter feeders, which means they filter feed for plankton, often near the surface of the water. 

However, the sharks that divers and snorkelers most often encounter are the small spotted catshark (also known as lesser-spotted dogfish) or the nursehound (also known by the common name large spotted dogfish). 

Both are small shark species which can be seen in our shallow seas among seaweed or in rocky areas with plenty of algae. They are nocturnal, so during the day are often resting on the bottom or tucked into crevices in the rocks. 

Firstly, do you know the difference between a skate and a ray? We didn’t until Cal spoke to Chris Rickard from Scotland’s Macduff Marine Aquarium and Shark & Skate Scotland on the Our Ocean Podcast last May!

Chris explained that rays give birth to live young, whereas skates lay egg cases (often called mermaid’s purses). To make matters a bit more confusing, many of the common names we use for our skates incorrectly suggest they are rays – such as the thornback ray, which is in fact a skate. 

There are around 18 species of skates and rays found in the UK’s waters, of which just eight are considered common.

One of the most enigmatic and incredible skates we can find in the UK is the flapper skate, which is the world’s largest skate. They can grow to up to 2.5m long and over 2m wide, making them an apex predator.

Despite once being known as the common skate, the flapper skate is far from common in our waters now. 

Flapper skates are only found in the northern North Sea and off of Scotland’s north-west coast, although their range used to be broader. 

They are categorised as critically endangered, putting them in the same category as the North Atlantic right whales, hawksbill turtles and scalloped hammerheads. 

Two of the main challenges for flapper skates are that they are big at every stage of their lifecycle. Their egg cases are about the size of an A4 piece of paper and the babies are 35–40cm long when they hatch. Chris also told us that they are slow-growing and we don’t think they become sexually mature until they’re around 12 to 15 years old.

As he put it, “That’s a long time to survive without being eaten, caught or killed.”

Chris explained there are many reasons why flapper skate numbers have fallen so dramatically.

“It’s almost certainly [down to] a mix of contributing factors, but the most obvious one is overfishing. Back in the ‘80s it was illegal to trawl within three miles of the coastline of Scotland. It was called the inshore limit. 

“All you could do was angle or use creels, very small-scale stuff that has much less impact on the seabed. But come the ‘80s, levels of catches were dropping quite drastically from previous levels so, in its wisdom, the government at the time decided to rescind that three-mile limit and allow trawlers and dredgers, which are even worse, into that three mile limit.”

The reason the three-mile limit was so important was because it protected the nursery grounds for many species, not just the flapper skate. With that protection removed, the ecosystems that flapper skate and many other species rely on were destroyed on a massive scale. 

This is why Our Seas Scotland is campaigning for a restoration of this vital three-mile limit around the country’s coast to protect it from the most damaging forms of fishing. 

 

While there is no denying that flapper skate are under serious threat, there are still reasons for hope. Chris told us about when he discovered a flapper skate egg-laying site in the Sound of Skye.

A scallop diver had found a flapper skate egg case and word of this got back to Chris via the Shark and Skate Scotland Facebook page. So he went out with the scallop divers a few days later to roughly where they’d found the egg case. 

“We did the dive and didn’t find anything, didn’t find anything, didn’t find anything. All of a sudden, we came across this boulder ground rising slightly off the seabed. It was a reasonably deep dive, 28–30 metres. We decided to go up the boulder slope to start coming closer to the surface.

“As soon as we went into the boulders, I saw a pair of flapper skate purses nestled in between some rocks. I took loads of photos. In the last four or five minutes of our dive I had a swim around and counted 41 purses in this one spot. At that time, I believe it was the most anyone had ever seen in one spot. I was very excited.”

Working with his colleague Lauren, Chris managed to get the site designated as a marine protected area.

One study released earlier this year also indicates that flapper skate numbers are slowly beginning to recover.

Keep your eyes open when you’re next at the beach! Chris, as well as several other organisations, want to gather more data about our skate and shark populations and one of the best ways to do that is to report the egg cases you find. 

So, if you spot an egg case – or a mermaid’s purse – take a photo and share it on the Shark & Skate Scotland Facebook page. You can also get involved in the Great Egg Case Hunt, which is run by the Shark Trust. 

Photo of a basking shark in Scotland by Kat Lewis.