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classrooms. Fishermen, who know it well as a shoal-water inhabitant, 

 put it to use, too— by using it as bait in eel and lobster traps. 



A trawler once hauled in an average of 98.8 pounds of Little skates 

 per hour in Long Island Sound. 



Mating takes place the year round. A study of Little skate embryos 

 in their &^^ cases was made by scientists at the Bingham Oceanographic 

 Laboratory of Yale University. It indicated that the embryos get out of 

 their cases by wagging their tails. They seem to bore a slit in the case 

 by tireless movement of their tails. When their 6- to 9-month hatching 

 period is over, they slip out of this slit and are on their own. 



They live in shallow water close to shore along the western Atlantic, 

 from North Carolina to Nova Scotia and the southern side of the Gulf of 

 St. Lawrence. 



The Little skate, at full maturity, weighs about 1^ pounds and is 

 known to grow to 21 inches in length. Its tail and the mid-ridge of its 

 back is thorny. Its upper surface is grayish or dark brown, usually with 

 small, darker spots; its lower surface is white or pale gray. The Little 



An abyssal skate ( Raja bathyphila ) : ( A ) male; ( B ) newly hatched male. 



Courtesy, The Sears Foundation for Marine Research from 

 Fishes of the Western North Atlantic by Henry B. Bigelow and WilUam C. Schroeder, 1953 



