California Sea Grant College Program

There were two primary goals for this project. One was to identify habitat associations of juvenile rockfish, cabezon, and greenling. Our second was to increase our understanding about what is required to develop and implement successful collaborative fisheries research. Juvenile benthic rockfish, Sebastes spp., cabezon, Scorpaenichthys marmoratus, and kelp greenling, Hexagrammos decagrammus, recruits were sampled monthly in untrawlable nearshore habitats between June 2003 and December 2005. Young fishes were trapped with 0.75 x 0.75 x 0.25 m traps of 0.5 inch mesh. Traps were deployed monthly for 24 hours without bait in nearshore (kelp, rock, sand, mud) and bay (eelgrass, mud, sand, pilings, kelp) habitats. This work was conducted with fishermen in Morro Bay, Monterey Bay, Bodega Bay, Fort Bragg, Eureka and Crescent City, California, and Charleston, Port Orford, and Newport, Oregon. Other cooperators include NOAA Fisheries, California Department of Fish and Game, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, South Slough Estuarine Research Reserve. Black rockfish were the most dominant species, accounting for 66% of all rockfish trapped. Copper rockfish were the second most abundant rockfish accounting for 15%.