Little Skate - Human Interactions

Human Interactions

Euell Gibbons promoted the consumption of the little skate in his cookbook Stalking the Blue-eyed Scallop (1964), noting that its wings, properly cut, could be treated like scallops. Round cuts from the little skate's wings are marketed as "scallops", though due to their small size their commercial importance is limited. Little skates are also often used to bait traps, especially for lobsters and eels. Skates are typically caught as bycatch in otter trawls; the little skate is not currently considered to be overfished. Along with the spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias), the little skate is often used as a model organism in biomedical research. A BAC genomic library for the little skate was completed in January 2005.