A juvenile Maugean skate. Image: Jane Rucker, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies. From https://tasmanianinquirer.com.au/news/this-is-a-hard-conversation-endangered-maugean-skate-headed-for-extinction-in-a-decade-unless-macquarie-harbour-fish-farms-rested/
Dear Readers, when I was growing up, skate, mashed potatoes and parsley sauce was the dish that tempted me to eat whenever I was ill in bed. It’s an acquired taste, for sure, but the texture of the fish and that intensely fishy flavour made it a favourite, not only when I was ill, but with chips for tea as well. When I was growing up, fish and chips was a cheap dinner, and therein lies the problem. In my own lifetime, skate as I knew it has been pretty much annihilated, and ‘ray’ or ‘skate’ fetches a premium price, as indeed it should when you’re eating an endangered species. Much better to have a look at the Marine Conservation Society’s list of sustainable fish, though be warned, it’s a constantly changing scenario, and I suspect that very few fish are sustainable enough to survive our depredations.
But, lest you think that this is a bad news post, there is some good news about at least one species, the Maugean Skate, dubbed ‘the thylacine of the seas’ by Tasmanian marine scientist Neville Barrett, lives in only one area, where it’s threatened by fish farms, hydroelectric dams and climate change. There are currently only 1000 of these fish, and they are nearly all adults, which means that the juveniles aren’t surviving.
Enter scientist Jayson Semmens and his team. In a desperate attempt to save the fish from extinction, they collected 50 egg cases (skates, rays and dogfish produce those ‘mermaid’s purses’ that you sometimes see on the beach), over half of which turned out to be viable. An adult female that they held in captivity also laid over a hundred eggs.
Photo by Maugean skate Research Team’/University of Tasmania
The team currently have 17 ‘skatelings’, with many more eggs maturing. Work is also going on to try to restore the current habitat – skate live in water with low oxygenation, but the fish farms had made the situation much worse, so there are trials involving pumping oxygen into the water.
This is all great news, although the key thing will be to see if the hatchlings are able to survive in the wild. There is time, though – skate are very slow-growing fish, and the babies are unlikely to be released until they’re thought to be old enough to survive, probably in five or six years time. By then the environment should be cleaned up enough for the skate to survive and thrive.
In these depressing times, it’s always good to know that there are people out there devoting their careers to save a species. Let’s see how things progress.
The New Scientist articles are here and here