MFL provides new information for sustainable management of longnose skates

A team of MFL researchers, led by PhD student Ms. Carolina Vargas-Caro, has published new information to assist with the sustainable exploitation of Chilean skates. As a fishery resource, skates are susceptible to overexploitation. They often occur in shallow inshore areas making them easily accessible to fishers. Their rate of reproduction is slow and the number of offspring produced is low. Exploitation rates need to be carefully considered to ensure populations can support seafood production now and in the future. This new work shows there are three genetically-distinct stocks on the Chilean coastline. Spatially-explicit models of population size and effects of harvesting need to match this stock structure to be most accurate.