Mediterranean Skates & Rays

To be cited as:
Mendez L., Bacquet A. and F. Briand. 2022. Guide of Mediterranean Skates and Rays. www.ciesm.org/Guide/skatesandrays/

This initiative by CIESM, in the wake of our recent work on sharks, aims to draw attention to their cartilaginous ‘cousins’ – the rays – which evolved from common ancestors at least 250 million years ago.  While living sharks include some 500 species worldwide, skates and rays are represented by some 630 species, most of which exhibiting a relatively narrow distributional range. Nowadays cartilagenous fishes are highly vulnerable to extinction mostly due to unregulated overfishing – deliberate or not. This is particularly the case in our region: only 38 species of skates and rays, all covered here, are found in the Mediterranean. 

Rays are slow-growing fishes, displaying a variety of reproductive and life history strategies. For instance, skates are oviparous, producing rectangular egg cases, while all other rays are viviparous. Migrations of rays can be substantial in some pelagic species but remain poorly known overall, along with their evolution since their largely cartilaginous skeleton does not fossilize well.