Love et al.: Declines in rockfish recruitment and populations 
493 
Figure 1 
Location of the eight Southern California Edison coastal electric generating stations. For this sur- 
vey, we used fish-impingement data from the four stations indicated in bold. 
of the Southern California Edison Company (SCE) 
provide a unique long-term look at fish populations 
in the SCB. The impingement data are relatively 
long-term (17 years), are collected at fine temporal 
resolution (at minimum several surveys per month), 
and encompass much of the broad spatial distribu- 
tion of the SCB. 
This paper is the first in a series investigating 
changes in fish abundances over the past 17 years in 
the SCB using the extensive data set collected by 
SCE. Here, we report on patterns of rockfish (genus 
Sebastes ) impingement from 1977 to 1993. Although 
rockfish made up slightly less than 1% of all species 
impinged in the SCE stations, as a group they are 
extremely important in both recreational and com- 
mercial fisheries in southern California (Wine 1 ; Ally 
et al. 2 ; Barsky 3 ). In addition to documenting changes 
in abundance of common species, we discuss patterns 
1 Wine, V. 1979. Southern California independent sport fish- 
ing survey. Annual report. 3. Calif. Dep. Fish Game, Mar. Res., 
Admin. Rep. 79-3. 
2 Ally, J. R. R., D. S. Ono, R. B. Read, and M. Wallace. 1991. 
Status of major southern California marine sport fish species 
with management , based on analyses of catch and size compo- 
sition data collected on board commercial passenger fishing ves- 
sels from 1985 through 1987. Calif. Dep. Fish and Game, Mar. 
Res. Div., Admin. Rep. 90-2, 376 p. 
3 Barsky, K. 1996. California Department of Fish and Game, 530 
E. Montecito St., Santa Barbara, CA, 93103. Personal commun. 
of change in abundance in relation to changes in sea 
surface temperature over the same time period. 
Materials and methods 
Data on fish impingement were obtained from the 
biological monitoring program conducted by South- 
ern California Edison at coastal electric generating 
stations throughout much of the SCB. Although fish 
impingement was monitored at all eight stations, we 
chose to analyze data from the four stations that had 
the most continuous sampling effort over the period 
1977-93 (Fig. 1). Three of the plants, Ormond Beach, 
Redondo Beach, and Huntington Beach, are fossil fuel 
fired; San Onofre is a nuclear generating station. Al- 
though the timing of sampling among the stations 
was haphazard, samples were taken at least once 
and up to 11 days per month. The number of samples 
taken per year at each station are shown in Table 1. 
All power plant intakes are situated on sandy bot- 
tom and all are surrounded by varying amounts of 
rock rubble. Intake openings are at approximately 
equal depths (8-10 m) with the exception of Redondo 
Beach station where intakes are situated in slightly 
deeper water (14 m). The intake openings vary in 
their distance to the shoreline from 285 m at Redondo 
Beach to 965 m at San Onofre. 
