 Individuals have been found with the denticles on the snout worn smooth, indicating that the snout is used to dig in the mud or sand to obtain bivalve mollusks.The barndoor skate is one of five skates in the Gulf of Maine that has commercial value, but of those, the species that are most frequently targeted are the winter skate ("Leucoraja ocellata") and the thorny skate ("Amblyraja radiata").The barndoor skate is most commonly considered bycatch by commercial trawlers operating in the northwestern Atlantic that target other commercially valuable species of fish using bottom trawling.