Flapper skate turn up again in the waters they were meant to save

A flapper skate has been recorded off Arran within the South Arran Marine Protected Area, and it is worth stopping to consider what that animal actually is. This is the largest skate in the world, a flattened, bottom-dwelling relative of sharks that can span more than two metres from wingtip to wingtip. It moves slowly over the seabed, often lying half-buried in sediment, and lays its eggs in tough leathery cases sometimes called mermaid's purses that can take well over a year to hatch. That slow life history, late maturity, few young, long incubation, is exactly what makes the species so vulnerable: it simply cannot reproduce fast enough to absorb heavy fishing pressure. Decades of trawling in the Clyde did just that, and the species profile tool lists the flapper skate as Critically Endangered.

The ground it was recorded on is not incidental. The South Arran MPA grew out of the Lamlash Bay No Take Zone, established in 2008 after local divers and fishermen pushed for a patch of seabed where bottom-dwelling species like this skate could simply be left alone. The zone expanded into the wider South Arran MPA in 2014, extending that protection across more of the ground the skate depends on.

Marine occurrence records show six sightings of the species in these waters over the past two years, but only one falls within the last twelve months. That is worth reading carefully: a presence record like this confirms an animal was there, not how many exist or whether the population is climbing or falling. The same skate can be logged more than once, and a thinner recent count can just as easily reflect fewer surveys as fewer skate. Still, confirming that a Critically Endangered, slow-breeding giant is still using the exact waters set aside to protect it is a meaningful data point, even if it cannot by itself say whether the MPA is meeting the goal it was built for.