California ocean anglers have long pursued the numerous and colorful rockfish species that inhabit the coastal waters. These popular fishes have inspired the name of craft beer and the California Department of Fish and Game lists 57 species native to the state. However, several rockfish populations plummeted due to overfishing from the 1970s to the … Continue reading
Birds are taking a bite out of young salmon populations in Central California, and researchers suspect that our trash is the likely root of the avian-predation problem. A new study by California Sea Grant-funded researchers shows that a young steelhead has about a 30-percent chance of being eaten by Western gulls during its transit to sea through creek … Continue reading
Two giant, sea serpent-like oarfish have been found dead in Southern California in the last week, and now the question is why? Searching for clues about the rare find, NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center scientists on Monday performed a necropsy on the 14-foot specimen that washed up in northern San Diego County on Friday. The … Continue reading
Lynn Waterhouse, a second-year biological oceanography graduate student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, has won a prestigious NOAA Fisheries-Sea Grant Fellowship in Population Dynamics. The competitive federal program funds Ph.D. students studying the population dynamics of living marine resources and quantitative methods for assessing their status. Waterhouse, who already holds master’s degrees … Continue reading
SAN DIEGO – An experimental fishing gear configuration is showing promise in protecting endangered sea turtles and other sensitive species. The gear is intended to selectively target swordfish at depth, taking advantage of the top pelagic predator’s differential day and night habitat preferences. If successful, the deep-set longline gear could offer fishers an alternative to … Continue reading
New aerial surveys of sardines off Southern California will address fishermen’s concerns that sardine abundance estimates are effectively “missing California fish.” Collaborative Fisheries Research West has awarded a $16,000 grant to a California sardine industry group to help pay for two spotter-pilot surveys. The first survey is being flown this summer and the second will occur in … Continue reading
The white abalone is a deep-water marine snail that, like our common garden snail, scoots slowly on a large muscular foot. A single hard shell armors its soft body and lets the gastropod hunker down and hide completely within its domed, thin-walled mobile home. Unlike garden snails, though, the white abalone – a Southern California … Continue reading
