This species is of minimal commercial importance and is mostly used as bait for lobster traps, though its wings are also marketed for food.

[4] This skate is native to the western Atlantic Ocean, from Nova Scotia, Canada, to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, USA.

[3][5] The little skate has a rounded pectoral fin disk 1.2 times as wide and as long, and a blunt snout with a central tip.

Adults have small dermal denticles and usually no midline thorns, though there are strong spines on the dorsal surfaces of the head, shoulders, and tail.

[5] The coloration of the little skate ranges from grayish to uniform or variable shades of brown above, becoming lighter towards the edges of the disk, and white or gray below.

[3] Little skates are more active at night and spend much of the day buried in sediment, usually near specific landscape features such as depressions excavated by other animals.

[3] They employ a curious mode of locomotion, dubbed "punting" by the first scientists to document it, to move over the sea floor.

Research[7] proposes that the locomotion is akin to that found in land vertebrates and thus puts the evolution of the underlying genes 20 million years earlier.

It has been speculated that using the pelvic fins in this manner assists in hunting, by reducing water turbulence that might alert the prey or distort the ray's electroreception.

[3] Known parasites of the little skate include the protozoans Caliperia brevipes, Haemogregarina delagei, and Trypanosoma rajae, the myxosporeans Chloromyxum leydigi and Leptotheca agilis, the nematode Pseudanisakis tricupola, and the copepods Eudactylina corrugata and Lernaeopodina longimana.

An average little skate spawns twice a year, in spring and fall, and produces a total of 10–35 eggs annually.

Females deposit their egg capsules in pairs on sandy bottoms, in water no more than 27 m (89 ft) deep.

[9] Round cuts from the little skate's wings are marketed as "scallops", though due to their small size their commercial importance is limited.