Blue Rockfish <?)■& 



Garibaldi 



Halfmoon 



Kelp Bass 



Lingcod__ 



Blackeye Goby 



Pacific 



Electric 



Ray 



Kelp Rockfish 

 Horizontal scale = 10 cm 



— California Sheephead 

 Figure 22. Some common kelp forest fishes (redrawn from Miller and Lea 1972). 



water column at dusk is not as dramatic; 

 there are a few nocturnal species, but the 

 majority are diurnal (Ebeling and Bray 

 1976). The number of nocturnal indivi- 

 duals and species, however, is greater in 

 the warmer water off Catalina Island 

 (Hobson and Chess 1976, Hobson et al . 

 1981). Species that are of tropical 

 origin do show the apparently programmed 

 activity pattern of tropical species, even 

 though predation may be reduced (Ebeling 

 and Bray 1976, but also see Hobson et al. 

 1981). 



Kelp forest fishes can be divided 

 into two groups according to the sub- 

 habitat occupied within kelp forests: 

 canopy-midwater orienting species, and 

 bottom-orienting species. Feeding 



categories can also be distinguished for 

 species in the habitat groups (Table 9) 

 and include browsers, planktivores, and 

 predators on motile prey (Choat 1982). 

 Browsers feed primarily on sessile orga- 

 nisms, whereas predators on mobile prey 



(ambushers, searchers, chasers) feed on 

 invertebrates and fishes. Planktivores 

 feed on open-water zooplankton. 



4.5.2 Canopy-midwater Species 



Only two species can truly be 

 classified as browsers in the canopy-mid- 

 water zones: the senorita (Figure 22), 

 Oxyjul ius cal ifornica , a member of a 

 tropical family (Labridae), and the kelp 

 surf perch Brachyistius frenatus in the 

 temperate family Embiotocidae. The 



senorita is an orange-colored, cigar- 

 shaped fish with a pointed snout and 

 protruding teeth. It generally swims in 

 schools of several to hundreds of indivi- 

 duals, and ranges from the canopy to the 

 bottom (Bray and Ebeling 1974). This 

 species is a daytime feeder on the bryo- 

 zoan Membranipora sp., which grows on 

 Macrocystis pyrifera , hydroids, kelp- 

 associated crustaceans, and some open- 

 water plankton (Bernstein and Jung 1979). 

 Bernstein and Jung (1979) suggested that, 



70 



