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Fishery Bulletin 110(1) 
of rockfish tended to prefer areas of higher slope and 
deeper depth near the continental slope. This mismatch 
between prey productivity and habitat preference for 
the rockfish species examined could explain part of the 
reason why the variables expected to represent variable 
food production did not behave as expected. It is also 
likely that because these variables were proxies for 
processes that were not measured, they did not reflect 
feeding conditions at all. 
The habitat-based indices of abundance presented 
here would benefit from better measurements of impor- 
tant variables. For example, even though water column 
