The Aleutian skate (''Bathyraja aleutica'') is a

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

skate Skate or Skates may refer to: Fish *Skate (fish), several genera of fish belonging to the family Rajidae * Pygmy skates, several genera of fish belonging to the family Gurgesiellidae * Smooth skates or leg skates, several genera of fish belongin ...

in the family

Arhynchobatidae Arhynchobatidae is a family of skates whose members are commonly known as the softnose skates. It belongs to the order Rajiformes in the superorder Batoidea of Ray (fish), rays. At least 104 species have been described, in 13 genera. Softnose ska ...

. It lives in depths ranging from 15 to 1602 meters in North Pacific Ocean from northern parts of Japan to the

Aleutian Islands The Aleutian Islands ( ; ; , "land of the Aleuts"; possibly from the Chukchi language, Chukchi ''aliat'', or "island")—also called the Aleut Islands, Aleutic Islands, or, before Alaska Purchase, 1867, the Catherine Archipelago—are a chain ...

and southeastern

Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...

and south to northern California. It has a maximum total length of 161 centimeters. It is the most abundant species of the ''

Bathyraja ''Bathyraja'' is a large genus of skates in the family Arhynchobatidae. Species There are 56 recognized species in this genus: * ''Bathyraja abyssicola'' ( Gilbert, 1896) (Deep-sea skate) * '' Bathyraja aguja'' ( Kendall & Radcliffe, 1912) (Agu ...

'' genus in the eastern

Bering Sea The Bering Sea ( , ; rus, Бе́рингово мо́ре, r=Béringovo móre, p=ˈbʲerʲɪnɡəvə ˈmorʲe) is a marginal sea of the Northern Pacific Ocean. It forms, along with the Bering Strait, the divide between the two largest landmasse ...

slope and throughout the

Gulf of Alaska The Gulf of Alaska ( Tlingit: ''Yéil T'ooch’'') is an arm of the Pacific Ocean defined by the curve of the southern coast of Alaska, stretching from the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island in the west to the Alexander Archipelago in the ...

. It is

oviparous Oviparous animals are animals that reproduce by depositing fertilized zygotes outside the body (i.e., by laying or spawning) in metabolically independent incubation organs known as eggs, which nurture the embryo into moving offsprings kno ...

and produces oblong egg capsules with stiff horn in each corner. The

embryo An embryo ( ) is the initial stage of development for a multicellular organism. In organisms that reproduce sexually, embryonic development is the part of the life cycle that begins just after fertilization of the female egg cell by the male sp ...

gets its nutrients from the

yolk Among animals which produce eggs, the yolk (; also known as the vitellus) is the nutrient-bearing portion of the egg whose primary function is to supply food for the development of the embryo. Some types of egg contain no yolk, for example bec ...

which is at first utilized for growth at a relatively constant rate but later in the development the yolk is absorbed rapidly.

References

Bathyraja Fish of the Pacific Ocean Taxa named by Charles Henry Gilbert Fish described in 1896 {{Rajiformes-stub