It is native to the northwestern Atlantic Ocean, and is found from the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and the southern side of the Gulf of St. Lawrence south to North Carolina.

[2] The fish is one of the largest skates found in the North Atlantic Ocean, reaching lengths up to 1.5 m (5 ft).

The barndoor skate is a flat-bodied fish with a large, disk-like body with sharply angled corners and a pointed snout.

Its pectoral fins have evolved into broad, flat, wing-like appendages used to propel the fish through the water.

The lower surface is light, white to grey, blotched irregularly with gray spots.

[3] The tail is moderately short and does not have large, thornlike structures called dermal denticles that are normally found on skates.

Juveniles primarily subsist on benthic invertebrates such as polychaetes, copepods, amphipods, isopods, crangon shrimp, and euphausiids.

[5] When harvested, the flesh of the barndoor skate is used as bait, fish meal, and pet food, and the meat from its wings is sold for human consumption.

[1] Abundances of barndoor skate dropped precipitously in the 1960s and early 1970s, coinciding with the period of intense fishing by foreign factory trawlers.

[1] In 1998, Casey and Myers[11] published a controversial study claiming that the barndoor skate was nearly extinct; however, they only presented data through 1993, so the recovery that had started in the early 1990s was not yet clearly evident.

In 1999, two conservation groups, GreenWorld, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Center for Marine Conservation, based in Washington, DC, petitioned the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to have the barndoor skate listed under the Endangered Species Act.

It cited increases in abundance and biomass of barndoor skate observed during surveys since 1993, which had become quite rapid by that time.

[1] Each year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates current population levels for a variety of aquatic species of special interest, and releases an annual report showing the progress being made to reduce harvesting of overfished species.