Starr et a\ Movements of Sebastes pauaspinis and 5 ch/orostictus in Monterey submanne canyon 



333 



24 Aug 



5 Sep 



9 Sep 



1998 



Figure 11 



Depth distribution of signals received from tag-3 bocaccio in 1998. Tag-12 bocaccio 

 displayed a similar pattern. 



We expected bocaccio to move more than greenspotted 

 rockfish. Bocaccio are frequently caught in midwater trawl 

 nets and are considered more mobile than greenspotted 

 rockfish (Love, 1996). Hartman (1987) reported that ju- 

 venile bocaccio moved a maximum of 148 km over two 

 years in tag-recapture studies in southern California. In 

 this respect, young bocaccio are similar to yellowtail rock- 

 fish iSebastes flavidus) that have exhibited movements on 

 the scale of hundreds of kilometers in tag-recapture stud- 

 ies conducted in Alaska and British Columbia (Stanley et 

 al., 1994). In Stanley et al.'s studies, IS^c of the tag recover- 

 ies were within 25 km of the release point, but maximum 

 movement observed was 250 km for Canadian yellowtail 

 rockfish, and 1400 km for Alaskan fish. 



Not all studies have shown that yellowtail rockfish move 

 great distances, however Using ultrasonic telemetry, Pearcy 

 ( 1992) tracked them from the surface intermittently for pe- 

 riods of several days and reported that tagged fish gener- 

 ally stayed within 2 km of the capture or release location. 

 After a period of 13 days in 1990, 11 of 12 tagged fish were 

 detected within 300 m of the capture site, even though some 

 fish had been displaced. A month after release, eight of 12 

 tagged fish were within 1.4 km of the capture location. 



Pearcy ( 1992) also suggested that the tagged fish exhib- 

 ited site fidelity to a pinnacle habitat. Pearcy 's work, com- 

 bined with results from other displacement studies (Carl- 

 son and Haight, 1972; Hallacher, 1984; Matthews, 1990; 

 Heilprin, 1992), suggests that several species of rockfish 

 possess homing ability. Half of the bocaccio we tagged ei- 

 ther stayed in the study area during the entire time of 

 the study, or left and returned, suggesting some site fidel- 



ity. Evidence of site fidelity was also provided by the chi- 

 square analyses of fish location in receiving zones. The 

 analyses indicated that bocaccio remained in the same ar- 

 ea over the course of a week, despite the evidence of fre- 

 quent movements out of a receiving zone on a daily basis. 

 Although our study was designed to evaluate the resi- 

 dence time of bocaccio in a discrete area, and not to quan- 

 tify the maximum distance bocaccio move, the relatively 

 small percentage of tagged bocaccio that stayed in our 

 12-km- study area during the entire study period indicated 

 that bocaccio may also move large distances. The results 

 of our study tend to reinforce the hypothesis presented 



