Spatiotemporal patterns of variability in the abundance and distribution of winter-spawned pelagic juvenile rockfish in the California Current.

Rockfish are an important component of West Coast fisheries and California Current food webs, and recruitment (cohort strength) for rockfish populations has long been characterized as highly variable for most studied populations. Research efforts and fisheries surveys have long sought to provide greater insights on both the environmental drivers, and the fisheries and ecosystem consequences, of this variability. Here, variability in the temporal and spatial abundance and distribution patterns of young-of-the-year (YOY) rockfishes are described based on midwater trawl surveys conducted throughout the coastal waters of California Current between 2001 and 2019.

Persistence of trophic hotspots and relation to human impacts within an upwelling marine ecosystem.

Human impacts (e.g., fishing, pollution, and shipping) on pelagic ecosystems are increasing, causing concerns about stresses on marine food webs.

A spatially distinct history of the development of california groundfish fisheries.

During the past century, commercial fisheries have expanded from small vessels fishing in shallow, coastal habitats to a broad suite of vessels and gears that fish virtually every marine habitat on the globe. Understanding how fisheries have developed in space and time is critical for interpreting and managing the response of ecosystems to the effects of fishing, however time series of spatially explicit data are typically rare. Recently, the 1933-1968 portion of the commercial catch dataset from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife was recovered and digitized, completing the full historical series for both commercial and recreational datasets from 1933-2010.