Clearnose Skate
(Raja eglanteria)

So, the first thing you perhaps thought of was, "Wow, a stingray." No, sorry, this is just a harmless cousin. They grow to be up to 3 feet long, and can be found in shallow, sandy areas from Massachusetts to Florida and the northern Gulf of Mexico. They are brown and spotted, and they feel like wet, slightly slimy velvet. The reason they are called clearnose skates is because the sides of their snout are translucent. Thus, "clearnose". They have spines on their shoulders (near their eyes and spiracles) and on their tail. "Wait, Sara, what's a spiracle?" Oh...right. This would be a good time for some anatomy. Well, sharks, rays, and skates are all elasmobranchs. They have cartilaginous bones, have gill slits instead of an operculum (the round thing over other fishes' gills), and lack a swim bladder, which is an organ that bony fish use to maintain buoyancy. With a skate, the gills are on the ventral surface, or bottom, and the spiracles, which create water and oxygen flow across the gills, are on the dorsal surface, or top. Skates swim by flapping their pectoral fins, which make up most of their body. like wings. They eat worms and crustaceans off the bottom, crushing them with their teeth. Anecdote Alert!This summer I found a clearnose skate that had just died. How do I know it had just died? No damage from scavengers or seagulls. Anyway, I was living at the beach house alone at the time. I thought that this was a pretty spiffy specimen. So, being me, I brought it up to the house. I don't know if I really planned on dissecting it. I just liked looking at it. I put it in salt water, packed in ice, in the small "beer" refrigerator in the kitchen. I checked on it all the time, trying to keep it well-preserved. My mom was due to come home on a Saturday...she came on a Friday. I hadn't gotten rid of it yet. She was amused, but also annoyed. She made me clean the fridge. Oh well.