Bigelow's Skate

Like all rays, Bigelow's ray has a flattened body with broad, wing-like pectoral fins. The body is sub-rhomboid. It is dark on the dorsal surface, with the outer edges of the disc and pelvic fins shading to a slightly darker colour. The dorsal fins are confluent. The upper and lower jaws have 33-44 rows. The snout has is bluntly angled and is short. Adult males have both alar and malar thorns. Its maximum length is 55 cm (1.80 ft).

Bigelow's ray has a disjunct distribution in the northern Atlantic. In the Western Atlanticit occurs from the Gulf of Mexico north ro New England and on the Scotian Shelf Grand Banks and Labrador Shelf of Canada, and the French territory of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and Greenland. In the Eastern Atlantic it is found from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Rockall Trough to the Bay of Biscay and along the African coast at northern Morocco, the Azores, Western Sahara and Guinea Conakry. Bigelow's ray lives on continental slopes and deepwater and has been recorded at 367–4,156 m (1,204–13,635 ft), mostly below 1,500 m (4,900 ft). It occurs in water temperatures between 3.5–4 °C (38.3–39.2 °F).

Bigelow's ray is oviparous. The eggs are oblong capsules with stiff pointed horns at the corners; they are deposited in sandy or muddy flats. Egg cases measure 5.3 centimetres (2.1 in) long and 3 centimetres (1.2 in). It is parasitised by Ditrachybothridium macrocephalum (tapeworms of the order Diphyllidea).

Bigelow's ray is classified in the genus Rajella, a name which is a diminutive of Raja, the genus it was originally proposed to be a subgenus of, given because of the relatively small size of its type species. The specific name honours the American oceanographer and marine biologist Henry B. Bigelow of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in recognition for his work on cartilaginous fishes.