APPENDIX III APPENDEX® dik 
PACIFIC GROUNDFISH 
Groundfish is the name applied to a group of fish that 
live on or near the ocean bottom. Most groundfish, or bot- | 
tom fish as they are sometimes called, are caught by the use | 
of trawl nets. 
ted over the Continental Shelf of the Northwest Atlantic 
and the North Pacific coast. Over three-fourths of the U.S. 
groundfish catch is landed on the east coast, chiefly at 
New England ports. 
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The principal U.S. bottom fish fishing grounds are loca- 
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The major Pacific coast groundfish species of commercial 
or potential interest, excluding halibut--discussed in a 
separate section of this report--include cod, flounders, 
hake, lingcod, Pacific Ocean perch, pollock, rockfishes, and 
sablefish. In 1973 California landings of groundfish totaled 
over 66.9 million pounds, followed by Washington, Oregon, 
and Alaska with 40.5 million pounds, 22.2 million pounds, 
and 3.3 million pounds, respectively. 
The various species known as flounders have provided 
by far the greatest tonnage and dollar income to commercial 
west coast fishermen. Rockfishes are the next most impor- 
tant groundfish. Several species, such as pollock and hake, 
which are caught only in small quantities by the U.S. fish- 
ing fleet, have the potential of becoming important to 
west coast markets. 
STATUS OF THE FISHERY 
Current harvest 
Landings of Pacific coast groundfish are largely influ- 
enced by market demand rather than species availability; 
that is, only certain species are retained from the total 
catch. Fishing is done at specific times and locations 
where desirable species are known to occur. For this 
reason, landings of groundfish in the coastal waters where 
the fishery now exists cannot be used to assess the rela- 
tive abundance of species exploited. 
Before World War II, the dominant species of flounders 
caught were petrale sole and English sole. After World War 
II, demand for food fish resulted in the expansion and rapid 
diversification of trawl fisheries to include a wide variety 
of other flounders, rockfishes, and other groundfishes. The 
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