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Over the past thirty years catches of skates have increased in the western Atlantic as a result of targeted fisheries and as by-catch. Presently, sustainable harvest levels for skates in the western Atlantic are unknown. Available life history information was used to model three western Atlantic skate species, little skate Leucoraja erinacea, winter skate Leucoraja ocellata, and barndooor skate Dipturus laevis, to determine their population growth rate and susceptibility to population decline under exploitation. Population characteristics were estimated using age-based matrix analyses for little and winter skate and a stage-based matrix approach for barndoor skate. The intrinsic rate of population increase (r) for little, winter and barndoor skates were 0.21, 0.13 and 0.20, respectively. Fishing mortality resulting in equilibrium conditions, where the intrinsic rate of increase is zero, were 0.35 for little skate, 0.16 for winter …