LOVE ET AL.: LIFE HISTORY AND FISHERY OF CALIFORNIA SCORPIONFISH 



three sharp catch dechnes have occurred during or 

 just after warm-water (El Nino) incursions. The 

 major El Niiios of the later 1950's and 1983-84 and 

 the lesser one of 1978-79 were all associated with 

 declines in catches. Thus, it seems likely that both 

 variation in fishery effort and fish availability have 

 been responsible for fluctuations in the commercial 

 catch. 



As mentioned previously, most of the commercial 

 fishery is concentrated on the spawning grounds, 

 involving rather labor-intensive hook-and-line fish- 

 ing. Relatively few vessels, primarily small skiffs, 

 specialize in this fishery. While fisheries which oc- 

 cur primarily on spawning grounds are quite suscep- 

 tible to rapid depletion, the relative inefficiency of 

 this fishery and the low effort level may preclude 

 this event. However, the introduction of other fish- 

 ing techniques, such as gillnetting or trawling, might 

 cause problems. At present, most trawling is con- 

 ducted in the upper part of the Southern California 

 Bight, where spawning aggregations are either 

 small or absent. Trawling over spawning grounds 

 would likely lead to a rapid decline in scorpionfish 

 numbers. 



Similarly, sportfishing can locally decrease the 

 numbers and mean lengths of popular sport species. 

 This is particularly true of the partyboat sport 

 fishery, where vessels carrying 40 or more passen- 

 gers may fish the same reef day after day. Par- 

 ticularly susceptible are the inshore rockfishes (Scor- 

 paenidae: Sebastes) many of which maintain home 

 ranges or territories on shallow reefs (Love 1978, 

 1980; Larson 1980). On some heavily fished reefs 

 in southern California, only juveniles of some rock- 

 fish species remain— larger individuals are caught 

 as soon as they are large enough to take a hook. 

 However, because California scorpionfish are quite 

 mobile— not permanently tied to a particular reef— 

 they are not as susceptible to depletion as other in- 

 shore members of their family. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



We wish to thank Andrew Heard, Laura Madjedi, 

 Heidi Parker, Laura Targgart and the crew of the 

 RV Vantuna (Chris Dunham, Mark Kibby, and Rick 

 Lange) for assistance in fish collection and tagging. 

 Jeffrey Cross and William Eschmeyer supplied 

 valuable data and unpublished manuscripts. Alfred 

 W. Ebeling reviewed the manuscript. Sara War- 

 schaw graciously typed the manuscript. This work 

 was supported, in part, by the Southern California 

 Edison Company and by Federal Aid to Sportfish 

 Restoration (Dingell-Johnson) funds. 



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