test groups of fall chinook salmon were transported 

 directly from the Klickitat Hatchery. 



Transporting hatchery fish by barge around the 

 Columbia River dams to avoid mortality remains a 

 viable management option. In spite of an impaired 

 homing ability, barged fish in this study returned to 

 the hatchery at a rate equal to that of the controls. 

 Barging not only increased survival, which benefited 

 the sports and commercial fisheries, but also pro- 

 vided an adequate number of fish returns to the 

 hatchery for reproduction purposes. 



Acknowledgments 



We wish to thank the Washington State Depart- 

 ment of Fisheries, Oregon Department of Fish and 

 Wildlife, California Department of Fish and Game, 

 and the Fisheries and Marine Service of Environ- 

 ment Canada for providing information on tagged 

 coho salmon recoveries. 



Literature Cited 



Ebel, W. J. 



1974. Marking fishes and invertebrates. III. Coded wire tags 

 useful in automatic recovery of chinook salmon and 

 steelhead trout. Mar. Fish. Rev. 36(7):10-13. 



Ebel, W. J., D. L. Park, and R. C. Johnsen. 



1973. Effects of transportation on survival and homing of 

 Snake River chinook salmon and steelhead trout. Fish. 

 Bull., U.S. 71:549-563. 

 Ellis, C. H., and R. E. Noble. 



1960. Barging and hauling experiments with fall chinook 

 salmon on the Klickitat River to test effects on sur- 

 vivals. Wash. Dep. Fish., 70th Annu. Rep., p. 57-71. 

 McCabe, G. T., Jr., C. W. Long, and D. L. Park. 



1979. Barge transportation of juvenile salmonids on the 

 Columbia and Snake Rivers, 1977. Mar. Fish. Rev. 

 41(7):28-34. 

 Slatick, E., D. L. Park, and W. J. Ebel. 



1975. Further studies regarding effects of transportation on 

 survival and homing of Snake River chinook salmon and 

 steelhead trout. Fish. Bull., U.S. 73:925-931. 



George T. McCabe, Jr. 

 Clifford W. Long 



Northwest and Alaska Fisheries Center 

 National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA 

 2725 Montlake Blvd. East 

 Seattle, WA 98112 



Little White Salmon Laboratory 

 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 

 P.O. Box 17 

 Cook, WA 98605 



Steve L. Leek 



MOVEMENT OF 



SABLEFISH, ANOPLOPOMA FIMBRIA, IN 



THE NORTHEASTERN PACIFIC OCEAN 



AS DETERMINED BY TAGGING 



EXPERIMENTS (1971-80) 



The sablefish, Anoplopoma fimbria, is a North Paci- 

 fic species distributed along the North American 

 coast from Mexico to the Bering Sea and on the Asian 

 coast east to Kamchatka and south to northeastern 

 Japan. The maximum life span of sablefish appears 

 to be near 40 yr (Beamish and Chilton in press). At 3 

 yrof age, sablefish reach a weight of about 1 kgandan 

 average length of 47 cm. By 8 yr of age, sablefish have 

 grown to about 3 kg and average 64 cm in length (Low 

 et al. 1 )- 



The sablefish fishery in the northeastern Pacific 

 Ocean and Bering Sea developed rapidly in the past 

 15-20 yr, growing from small United States and Ca- 

 nadian fisheries to large-scale multinational fisheries 

 by Japan, the U.S.S.R., and the Republic of Korea 

 (ROK). The increased exploitation of sablefish was 

 followed by declines in catch per unit effort (CPUE) 

 in many areas (Low et al. footnote 1). Because of this 

 decline in CPUE, a tagging program was instituted to 

 identify management areas and determine migra- 

 tion patterns. 



Some studies of sablefish migration had been con- 

 ducted in the 1950's and 1960's (Holmberg and 

 Jones 1954; Edson 1954; Pruter 1959; Pasquale 

 1962; Novikov 1968; Pattie 1970). In these studies, 

 most of the tagged fish were recovered near the area 

 tagged. However, some fish were recovered over 

 1,000 km away (Holmberg and Jones 1954; Pruter 

 1959). Some fish tagged in the Gulf of Alaska were 

 recovered off the California coast (Edson 1954) while 

 other fish, tagged off the Washington coast, were 

 recovered in the Bering Sea (Pasquale 1962; Pattie 

 1970). The results of these studies provided direct 

 evidence of the occurrence of some long-range move- 

 ment. The degree of long-range movement within the 

 population could not be evaluated, since, in most of 

 the studies, the number of fish tagged and recovered 

 was small and each tagging project covered only a 

 portion of the known range of sablefish. 



Methods 



To tag sablefish, over as much of its range as pos- 



■Low, L. L., G. K. Tanonaka, and H. H. Shippen. 1976. Sablefish 

 of the northeastern Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea. Processed rep., 

 115 p. Northwest and Alaska Fisheries Center, National Marine 

 Fisheries Service, NOAA, 2725 Montlake Blvd. E., Seattle, WA 

 98112. 



FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 81, NO. 2, 1983. 



415 



