Love et al Fish assemblages around oil platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel area 



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flag rockfish, and halfbanded rockfish) were found 

 over a wide size range, encompassing most life stages. 

 Although a wide size range of lingcod was observed, it 

 is noteworthy that most of the small fish were found 

 around platform Irene; relatively few of these young 

 individuals inhabited the other platforms. 



Discussion 



Although we found large variability in many of the 

 attributes of the fish assemblages living around these 



seven oil platforms, several consistent patterns were 

 evident. Around all of these structures, the midwa- 

 ter fish assemblage was quite different from that 

 inhabiting the platform bottoms. Juvenile rockfishes 

 were by far the dominant group occupying the mid- 

 water. Although the density of all species combined 

 was similar between the bottom and midwater of 

 any given platform, the biomass was much greater 

 on the bottom, owing to larger fish living around 

 the bottom. In addition, there was a consistently 

 greater number of species on the bottom than in the 

 midwater around each platform. The bottom of the 



