[2] It is a benthic species of sandy and detrital bottoms, at depths of 40–400 m (exceptionally down to 500 m) from coastal regions to the upper continental slope.

[5] Because of its large size and slow reproductive rate, the bottlenose skate is extremely vulnerable to exploitation by fisheries.

Anecdotal data suggests that there has been a substantial decline in the abundance and geographical range of this species in the north Atlantic and Mediterranean.

[1] In the Mediterranean, bottlenose skates of most size classes down to egg cases are taken as by-catch in multi-species trawling fisheries.

The MEDITS trawl surveys, begun in 1985 and carried out six times a year in four geographic regions, indicates that the bottlenose skate is now very rare in the Mediterranean and that it has been reduced to a small fraction of its former range.

The Italian National Group for Demersal Resource Evaluation (GRUND) survey captured this species infrequently in the Adriatic Sea.

[1] In 2010, Greenpeace International added the bottlenose skate to its Seafood Red List, which includes commonly marketed species that "have a very high risk of being sourced from unsustainable fisheries".