FIELD SEASON STARTS WITH A DEEP WATER SPECIES VISIT
Last week the ODFW Marine Reserves Program kicked off the Fall field season with two days of hook-and-line surveys at Cascade Head and juvenile fish samples collected at Redfish Rocks. We conducted hook-and-line surveys aboard the Samson, captained by Lars Robison out of Depoe Bay, with our hard working volunteer anglers helping us catch and measure fish. At Redfish Rocks, while pulling up our latest collection of juvenile fish samples, we received a huge surprise - a record breaking pulse, in our four years of sampling, of juvenile splitnose rockfish.
Like many rockfish species found off Oregon’s coast, splitnose are long lived (up to 103 years old!). They are caught in commercial fisheries in deeper waters, along the continental shelf and slope. Splitnose rockfish are of particular interest to our research because they have a unique start to their lives. Their young recruit to shallower, nearshore waters such as in the Redfish Rocks Marine Reserve, and school up around kelp—which is where the Marine Reserves team found them hanging out last Thursday. Read more on our Blog.
Click on the photo above to view our video taken in the field, on how these juvenile fish samples are collected. Want to share this story with others on Facebook? Click on the gray icon below.
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