One of the largest Irish animals is at imminent risk of further decline — new report

The flapper skate is critically endangered and are top predators and their absence, like taking wolves from a forest, can lead to impacts cascading through the ecosystem. It is hard to imagine that a species in a similar predicament on land would attract so little attention says ecologist Pádraic Fogarty

A Flapper skate fish is different from a sting ray because the skate does not have the stinging barb near its tail like a ray does. Source: wood engravings published in 1841

One of the largest Irish animals is also among the least known. The flapper skate is the largest skate in the world; a fully grown adult is well over two metres in length and has the flattened, diamond-shaped profile of a stealth bomber.

Tragically, this combination of size and lack of public awareness has been its undoing. Although it was never of great fisheries value, its size and shape meant it was caught as bycatch in every type of net.

Today the flapper skate is ‘critically endangered’ but, unlike tigers and giant pandas, or even curlews closer to home, this has provoked no great reaction from the authorities or public at large.

A new paper published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, led by the School of Biological Sciences at Queens University, Belfast warns that “the flapper skate is at imminent risk of further decline without the implementation of a more robust and spatially comprehensive conservation strategy”.

The research looked at trawl survey data to identify three areas showing high likelihood of the remaining populations of flapper skate, one of which is in relatively shallow waters off the coast of counties Clare and Galway (the other two are off Scotland).

Flapper skate are now so rare that answering basic questions about their biology and life history is a challenge. In the last decade, Marine Protected Areas have been designated in Scottish waters to protected nursery areas (flapper skate deposit eggs in large cases or mermaids’ purses). No such areas are known from Ireland although egg cases have been found along the west coast.

File image: Dr Danielle Orrell collects parasites from a female flapper skate measuring 1.6m in total length (measured from the tip of its snout to the end of its tail). Picture: David Edwards of West Cork Charters

Young flapper skate will migrate to deeper waters where they spend many years growing to maturity, but that is only if they are lucky enough to avoid the wall of fishing activity that stretches from inshore waters out to the continental shelf.

Even though it is prohibited for fishermen to land them, early research from Queens University indicates that the juveniles have exceptionally delicate skin and do not survive being caught in fishing gear, even if quickly returned to the sea. The adults on the other hand, which are targeted by recreational anglers, seem to survive if handled correctly. Nevertheless, the stress of being caught on a line can result in pregnant females aborting their young.

Flapper skate are top predators and their absence, like taking wolves from a forest, can lead to impacts cascading through the ecosystem. It is hard to imagine that a species in a similar predicament on land would attract so little attention.

Rare find — Flapper Skate egg case (Dipturus intermedius) found at Silverstrand, Galway@GalwayAquarium @BioDataCentre #Galway #Gaillimh #MermaidsPurse pic.twitter.com/zJLDPNwOyR

— Sandlarks (@sandlarks) July 26, 2025

Patrick Collins, one of the authors of the paper, believes that the flapper skate is “not a lost cause” but warns that there is “no quick fix”. He told me that “our research risks becoming little more than an obituary” but that there is still time to act.

If it is to survive, it urgently needs more investment in research, protection under the Wildlife Act to include licencing for recreational angling as well as dedicated MPAs and appropriate regulation of commercial fishing. We can’t be the generation to allow this magnificent animal to disappear forever.