Help spot skates

A NEW, free app is helping to build a better picture of how critically endangered flapper skates are faring around Scotland’s coasts, including in Galloway. The SkateSpotter mobile app builds on the success of the online flapper skate photo database. And NatureScot is asking anyone who spots a flapper skate to take a picture and report it. The mobile phone app is designed to make it easier for the public to submit photos on the go, but older photos can also be uploaded. Jane Dodd, NatureScot’s elasmobranch specialist, said: “We encourage anglers, divers, fishermen and marine surveyors from all over Scotland to download the SkateSpotter app and become citizen scientists, helping us to understand and restore these amazing animals. An army of volunteers using SkateSpotter could generate a much more significant amount of data than a handful of scientists. Flapper skate are generally resident or show site fidelity (leaving and coming back to a site), but they do travel longer distances and we might be underestimating these because most of our SkateSpotter submissions come from specific areas." Steven Benjamins of the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) said: “Most of the data in SkateSpotter is from flapper skate angling in the Loch Sunart to the Sound of Jura MPA because that’s where most of our contributing skippers are based, with some photos from Orkney and Shetland, the Mull of Galloway and Ireland." Flapper skate belongs to the elasmobranch or shark family. Instead of bones, it has a skeleton formed of cartilage. Adult flapper skate can reach up to 285cm (for the larger female sex) and seem to prefer deep (100m+) muddy habitats where they eat prawns and other smaller skates and small sharks.