Love et a\: Fish assemblages around oil platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel area 



113 



alternation of warm- and cold-water conditions that 

 have occurred over millennia (MacCall, 1996). 



Previous surveys of rockfishes at the two most 

 inshore platforms of the Santa Barbara Channel, 

 Hilda and Hazel, provide some evidence for the plas- 

 ticity of rockfish populations in the Santa Barbara 

 Channel. In the late 1950s, Carhsle et al. (1964) 

 found large numbers of bocaccio and olive, copper, 

 and brown rockfishes. Most of these fishes were 

 either YOYs or older juveniles. By 197.5, olive and 

 brown rockfishes were still abundant, but bocaccio 

 and copper rockfishes were uncommon (Bascom et 



al., 1976). In this latter survey, blue rockfish, not 

 reported by Carlisle et al. (1964), were abundant. 



Thus, we believe that the relative dearth of juve- 

 nile rockfishes around Southern California Bight 

 platforms is not a permanent condition but repre- 

 sents a fluctuating system. It is likely that as ocean- 

 ographic conditions in the Southern California Bight 

 become more favorable to rockfish recruitment, off- 

 shore platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel may 

 well harbor far greater numbers of juvenile rock- 

 fishes than at present. In fact, indirect evidence 

 implies that juvenile rockfishes were at one time 



