Estimating species and size composition of rockfishes to verify targets in acoustic surveys of untrawlable areas

Rockfish (Sebastes spp.) biomass is difficult to assess withstandard bottom trawl or acoustic surveys because of their propensity to aggregate near the seafloor in highreliefareas that are inaccessible to sampling by trawling. We compared the ability of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), a modified bottom trawl, and a stereo drop camera system(SDC) to identify rockfish species and estimate their size composition. The ability to discriminate species was highest for the bottom trawl and lowest for the SDC. Mean lengths and size distributions varied among the gear types, although a larger number of length measurements could becollected with the bottom trawl and SDC than with the ROV. Dusky (S. variabilis), harlequin (S. variegatus), and northern rockfish (S. polyspinis), and Pacific ocean perch (S. alutus) were the species observed in greatest abundance. Only dusky and northern rockfish regularly occurred in trawlable areas, whereas these two species and many more occurred in untrawlable areas. The SDC was ableto resolve the height of fish off the seafloor, and some of the rockfish species were observed only near the seafloor in the acoustic dead zone. This finding is important, in that fish found exclusively in the acoustic dead zone cannot be assessed acoustically. For these species, methodssuch as bottom trawls, long-lines, or optical surveys using line transect or area swept methods will be the only adequate means to estimate the abundance of these fishes. Our results suggest that the selection of appropriatemethods for verifying targets will depend on the habitat types and species complexes to be examined.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Rooper, Christopher N., Martin , Michael H., Butler, John L., Jones, Darin T., Zimmermann, Mark
Format:	article biblioteca
Language:	English
Published:	2012
Subjects:	Biology, Ecology, Fisheries,
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/1834/25577
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