Whidbey Islanders coming across skates, the winged fish related to rays and sharks, hooked on their line or washed up on the beach this summer has some wondering what they are.

While the International Union for the Conservation of Nature deems skates a species of least concern, and plenty dwell throughout the Salish Sea, it’s not an everyday encounter from Whidbey’s shores, at least not to the untrained eye.

The big skate is gray, brown, maroon, olive and black with rosettes of white and can have dark blotches underneath. Each pectoral fin carries a large ocellus, or ringed spot. Skates are flattened and diamond shaped like rays, slightly wider than they are long, with a pointed snout.

While big skates can grow up to eight feet and 200 pounds, they are rarely that big. Skates can live until their 20s, the oldest being just shy of the 27 club.

Ralph Downes, an officer with the state Fish and Wildlife Department, has caught skates off West Beach, he said, some exceeding 30 pounds. While most people catch them accidentally, some anglers target them to eat.

“I don’t want to call it the tofu of fish, but it’s a very mild, very mild fish,” he said, “So it’s not fishy and you can add your own spices and seasonings.”

Beachcombers may see skates more than they are aware. After the reproductive process, skate egg casings sometimes wash ashore, and people walk right past not knowing what they are.

“It’s almost like an alien-looking thing that a lot of times people will see washed up on the beach,” Downes said, “and oftentimes it is part of someone’s shoe or something like that.”

Big skates range from the Bering Sea and southeast Alaska to central Baja, California. While they have been found as deep as 2,600 feet, they are more often found between 10 and 360 feet of coastal bays and estuaries, typically hanging out on sandy, muddy areas of the ocean floor.

Because of this, oftentimes divers see them more than beachcombers, Downes said.

“When they get a little too close, all of a sudden something that was invisible because it was covered by sand on the bottom takes off like a rocket,” he said.

Cory Prusha was hiking with his dog at Hastie Lake County Park in the afternoon earlier this month. Near the boat ramp, a juvenile big skate had washed ashore. This one was only about 20 inches, a pale maroon in color with white spots.

Prusha said he had never seen one before and wasn’t sure what it was.

In the same week, South Whidbey Islander Sarah Kleparek caught a big skate off Holmes Harbor.

“We like to go bottom fishing for flounder and sole, and we popped a skate,” she said.

Growing up in Freeland, she knew exactly what it was and freed it immediately back to the depths, but it had been almost two decades since the last time she’d seen one.

“Every once in a while we pulled a skate in when we were out there, and the last time I had seen one was probably in the year 2007,” she said.

Kleparek was happy to see that they are still out there, she said.

This skate was about three feet in length, but that’s not to say there aren’t monsters lurking around Whidbey. Not too far from where Kleparek caught her skate is where one man encountered the largest skate in the sea.

In 1986, off Double Bluff Beach, Dan Cartwright reeled in a 130-pounder, setting a state record that has yet to be beaten.

Photo by Cory Prusha A 1.5-foot-long big skate washed ashore near Hastie Lake County Park in early August.