This technical review supports and is a source document for the Puget Sound Rockfish Conservation
Plan. It summarizes the current knowledge of rockfish biology in Puget Sound (life history, habitat
usage, and ecosystem linkages), provides an overview of the exploitation history of rockfishes, and
examines their current stock status. The review also includes a series of recommendations to improve the
understanding and management of rockfishes in Puget Sound. Puget Sound includes all the inland marine
waters of Washington including the U.S. portions of the Straits of Juan de Fuca and Georgia, the San Juan
Islands, Puget Sound proper, and Hood Canal.
Rockfishes are bottomfishes managed under the auspices of the Puget Sound Groundfish Management
Plan and are co-managed with the Treaty Tribes of Washington. The present management plan by the
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife implements a precautionary policy for groundfish
management. However, previous management efforts have ranged from targeting recreational and
commercial fisheries on rockfish to passive management. As rockfish stocks declined during the past
three decades, the Department has progressively restricted the harvest opportunities for rockfish by
eliminating targeted commercial fisheries, reducing recreational bag limits, and discouraging or
eliminating recreational fisheries targeting rockfish in Puget Sound.
Rockfishes in Puget Sound are a diverse group that form mixed species assemblages and require speciesspecific
habitats at different life-stages. Rockfish have evolved to complex life strategies adapted for long
survival, slow growth, late age-at-maturity, low natural mortality rates, and high habitat fidelity.
Reproduction follows a pattern of irregular successful recruitment events. Population structure is highly
dependent upon the evolutionary and ecological patterns of each species. Copper, quillback, and brown
rockfishes living south of Port Townsend form a unique population separate from northern waters.
Rockfishes feed on a wide variety of prey, including plankton, crustaceans, and fishes. Rockfishes are
prey for a variety of predators including lingcod and other marine fishes, marine mammals, and marine
birds. Rockfishes are very susceptible to barotrauma or being captured and brought to the surface from
depth.
The complex oceanography and benthic topography of Puget Sound influences rockfish distributions and
population characteristics at all life-stages. Most adult rockfish are associated with high-relief, rocky
habitats, but larval and juvenile stages of some rockfishes make use of open water and nearshore habitats
as they grow. Nearshore vegetated habitats are particularly important for common species of rockfish and
serve as nursery areas for juveniles and later provide connecting pathways for movement to adult habitats.
A system of marine reserves in Puget Sound provides rockfishes with protection from harvest and
provides a baseline for ecological and natural demographic information for stock assessment and
conservation.
Rockfish have been harvested by Native Americans and commercial and recreational fishers in Puget
Sound. Rockfish harvests prior to 1970 were small relative to those between the mid-1970s through the
mid-1990s when both recreational and commercial fishing effort increased. In 1974, a federal court
decision reallocated salmon harvest on an equitable basis between tribal and non-tribal harvesters.
Bottomfish and their fisheries were popularized for their sport, value, and healthful benefits, and previous
non-tribal effort shifted to fishing for bottomfish. Since 1995, tribal fishers can harvest up to 50% of the
rockfish quota. However, tribal harvests have accounted for an average 1% the total rockfish harvest
since 1991. Regulations enacted during the past decade to conserve rockfishes reduced recent harvests by
90%.
The present status of rockfishes in Puget Sound was characterized using fishery landings trends, surveys,
and species composition trends to evaluate rockfish stocks’ vulnerability to extinction. These evaluations
rely upon fishery-dependent and independent information to detect changes over time. Conventional agestructure
population models or biomass dynamic models were not applied due the lack of long-term catch
data and associated biological information. The American Fisheries Society’s Criteria for Marine Fish
Stocks were modified as a robust approach to establish stock status. These criteria are based upon life
history parameters relating to population productivity and compare the magnitude of stock trends over
ecologically appropriate time scales. Four status categories were based upon the magnitudes of trends
and included Healthy, Precautionary, Vulnerable, and Depleted. Most rockfish species were in
Precautionary condition, however, copper rockfish were Vulnerable in South Sound and quillback
rockfishes were Vulnerable and Depleted in North and South Sound, respectively. Based upon stock
assessments in adjacent coastal waters, yelloweye and canary rockfish were in Depleted status in North
and South Sound. The relatively deepwater greenstriped rockfish, redstripe rockfish, and shortspine
thornyheads were in healthy condition as were stocks of Puget Sound rockfish in South Sound.
The health of rockfish stocks in Puget Sound is impacted by factors that remove excessive numbers of
individuals, chronically alter or degrade their habitats and block life history pathways, or affect other
species that increase predation, disease, or competition. Many stressors potentially limit the productivity
of rockfish stocks in Puget Sound and include fishery removals, age truncation, habitat disruption, derelict
gear, hypoxia, predation, and fishery removals of larger and older individuals. These stressors may have
even greater impacts when stocks are at low levels causing, higher mortality rates that can drive stocks to
dangerously low levels. Among the potential stressors, fishery removals, derelict gear, hypoxia, and food
web interactions are the highest relative risks to rockfish in Puget Sound. Chemical contamination is a
moderate risk manifested by undetermined reproductive dysfunction associated with exposure to
endocrine disrupting compounds, loading of larvae with persistent organics via maternal transfer,
exposure of pelagic larvae to toxics via contaminated prey, and exposure of long-lived adults to toxics
like polychlorinated biphenyl compounds that accumulate over the life of the fish. These are most likely
to impact rockfish living in urban areas but may be more widespread in the food web.
Based upon this review of information and the condition of rockfish stocks in Puget Sound, a series of
recommendations were developed to improve the conservation and management of rockfishes in Puget
Sound. Principal recommendations are to improve our knowledge of rockfish in the ecosystem and their
habitat requirements; better indentify, quantify, and control stressors on rockfish stocks; improve the
management of rockfishes by evaluating the effectiveness of marine reserves, minimizing bycatch and
accounting for all catch; and improve stock assessment by conducting comprehensive and frequent
surveys, estimating life history parameters such as maturity, growth and mortality; better defining stocks
and populations through genetic analysis; and developing quantitative models to reconstruct and analyze
the abundance and demographic population structure.
