White skate

Rostroraja alba

5: Avoid How we work out the ratings

What to check for

Location

North East Atlantic

Technical location

Atlantic, Northeast, All areas

Caught by

Bottom trawl (beam), Bottom trawl (otter), Net (gill or fixed)

Rating summary

It is prohibited to fish for, land, or retain white skate in UK or EU waters. Very little is know about the stock, but it is assessed as Critically Endangered by IUCN and ICES considers this stock to be depleted. Therefore, they are automatically a red-rated species.Rating last updated January 2026.

Technical consultation summary

How we worked out this Rating

White skate are critically endangered and it is prohibited to catch them across this area of Europe. Therefore, this species is a critical fail on the Good Fish Guide.There are no reference points to determine an overfished or overfishing status. Due to the lack of data collected for white skate, there are no robust indicators to determine the population trends.White skate are assessed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List in Europe, and are Endangered on a global scale. They are a prohibited species and cannot be targeted or landed in southerly European waters where they occur.ICES considers this stock to be depleted, and there should be zero catch in each of the years 2024-2027. The perception of the stock is based on the lack of recent records of this species in comparison with historical accounts, which documented a more widespread occurrence and localised abundance in parts of the Northeast Atlantic. Historical information indicates that white skate has formerly been targeted in fisheries in the English channel and around Brittany, but present records show only a few isolated instances in scientific surveys.The species has low resilience with minimum population doubling time 4.5 - 14 years.Landings data for the species are not considered reliable, often due to misidentification. Issues with both fishers and survey staff being unfamiliar with species needs to be resolved to aid in data collection and appropriate releases of this protected species. Despite landings being prohibited some commercial landings are still estimated by ICES to occur, but these are thought to be overestimated due to coding errors or misidentification issues.Discarding is known to take place, but ICES cannot quantify the corresponding catch. Discard survival, which is likely to occur, has also not been estimated.

References

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