Mediterranean Skate Photography Expedition
January 2024
In January 2024, I spent 12 days in the northwest Mediterranean looking for endemic skates. Although January is not the best time weather-wise, skates are cold water elasmobranchs that are more commonly encountered during the winter months.
I started the expedition in Mallorca where I dove with local ray fanatic Luis Perez, who was kind enough to take a few days off to help me find a Mediterranean Rough Skate which are relatively common off the east end of the island.
After a long search at night over featureless sand, we finally located one just before exiting at Cala d’Egos. This is apparently a very good spot to look for rough skates during the colder months, with multiple skate sightings on most night dives.
This was the only species I was looking for in Mallorca, so as soon as I had some respectable images, Luis and I relocated to Tossa Del Mar on the mainland north of Barcelona.
Historically, Tossa was a great spot to see Undulate Skates, but when we arrived the locals told us that undulate skates had become quite rare. Instead, they had been replaced by Blonde Skates; another species that was on my list, so we went in search of that species.
After some thorough daytime searches at the north end of Tossa’s main beach, we finally found a nice specimen laying in sea grass.
Night diving proved to be far more productive, with around a dozen blonde skates foraging in the shallows, but after a week of diving, I had still not located any undulate skates.
With just a couple of days remaining, I drove up to Montpellier in the south of France to look for Mediterranean Starry Skates with Matt Lapinski who is the president of the French shark and ray conservation organization Association Ailerons, but the winter wind had brought the visibility in this silty area to zero. I tried one very shallow dive, but I was unable to see my hand when it was right in front of my mask, so I drove back to Barcelona empty handed.
Although I was hoping for a more productive trip, two new skates was not a terrible result. I will return to southern France to look for Mediterranean skates again, but for undulate skates, my next attempt will be on the south coast of England where they are also fairly common and the water is a little cooler.
