Pacific saury. — Pacific saury is one of the leading forage 

 foods of fur seals off California during February and March 

 (Fig. 7). Its geographic occurrence in the stomachs of fur seals 

 taken off California is shown in Figure 21. 



Typically oceanic, the Pacific saury ranges across the entire 

 North Pacific Ocean from Japan to North America; the east- 

 ern Pacific saury stock is located principally in waters from 

 northern Baja California, Mexico, to Washington (Fig. 22). 

 The population is considered to be large (fifth most abundant 

 species) as determined from CalCOFI surveys (Ahlstrom 

 1968). The population of the saury is evaluated on the basis of 

 egg and larval estimates, predator- forage indices, and from 

 visual observations. Such indicators give abundance estimates 

 of 450,000 to 1.5 million tons (Ahlstrom 1968; Smith et al. 

 1970; Inoue and Hughes 1971). 



Pacific saury, in common with the northern anchovy and 

 market squid, form an important link between lower and 

 higher trophic levels as they provide forage for a large variety 

 of fishes and marine mammals in the eastern North Pacific 

 Ocean (Grinds and Gill 1968; Inoue and Hughes 1971; Pinkas 

 et al. 1971). Gill and Hughes (1971) observed a sei whale feed- 

 ing on a large school of sauries at the surface. The whale was 

 subsequently killed — its stomach was filled with an estimated 

 227 kg of sauries 6 to 29 cm long. Rice (1977) reported the 

 saury formed 9% of the food of sei whales off California, 

 whereas the anchovy was dominant at 57%, and the krill at 



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Figure 21. — Locations off California where 336 northern fur seals were collected 

 whose stomachs contained Pacific saury, 1958-66. 



Figure 22.— Eastern Pacific stock of Pacific saury (from Inoue and Hughes 1971). 



30%. Immature saury were reported by Frey (1971) to be a 

 major food item of the albacore tuna, Thunnus alalunga. 



Mais (1974) reported that a high percentage of successful 

 night light stations contained the saury (48%). This was inter- 

 preted to be indicative of a large saury population but the 

 study concluded that commercial concentrations were infre- 

 quent and erratic, resulting in a failure in the development of a 

 commercial fishery off California. The reason for this lack of 

 dense commercial concentrations was attributed by Trumble 

 ( 1 973) to the lack of large thermal boundaries comparable with 

 that of the cold water-warm water boundary of the Kuroshio- 

 Oyashio Current in the western Pacific Ocean. 



Although Pacific saury eggs were found during all months 

 of the year on CalCOFI surveys, 92% of the eggs were col- 

 lected from February to July. Of these, 65% were taken during 

 April, May, and June (Ahlstrom 1968). The coastal waters be- 

 tween lat. 26° and 40°N constituted the principal spawning 

 grounds in the survey area. Areas off southern California and 

 Baja California, Mexico, were reported to be nursery grounds 

 containing mostly juveniles dispersed over a wide area. The 

 largest concentrations of sauries were reported to be at dis- 

 tances of 64 to 193 km offshore (Frey 1971). Fur seals were 

 most often seen from 70 to 130 km offshore near the continen- 

 tal shelf and slope. 



Rockfishes. — Rockfishes ranked fourth in both volume and 

 frequency as forage food of fur seals off California in 1965 

 (Fiscus and Kajimura 1967). All of the rockfish were immature 

 juveniles (vertebral length from 47 to 99 mm); one seal stom- 

 ach contained 137 of these small rockfish. Rockfish were most 

 numerous in stomachs from seals collected off Monterey, 

 Calif, (lat. 36°38'N, long. 121°55'W). 



18 



