Monitoring

If you had gone diving off the coast of British Columbia 30 or 40 years ago, you would have found yourself in the middle of so many rockfish that it would have been hard to see past them. Once you'd settled in and stopped moving, whole schools of rockfish would have swum up to check you out.

Today, many dive sites have much fewer rockfish. Most of those regal old rockfish have been caught. The rockfish that are left usually hide when they see something coming towards them.

Scientists want to help rockfish become numerous again. The first step: find out how many we have right now so that we can tell when our efforts start working.

In B.C., baby quillbacks hide under drifting kelp until they turn into adults. Baby tiger and copper rockfish hang out with them too.

Counting fish in the ocean isn’t like counting cars on a street. Scientists can’t just pull up a chair and watch them go by. They have to use fishing nets, take submarines, operate underwater robots, or bravely zip up their drysuits and go diving.

Jeff and Paul like to dive right in when it comes to counting rockfish. That way, they can get up close and personal with the fish. This amazing experience serves an important purpose – it lets Jeff and Paul keep track of how many rockfish there are and where they’re hanging out. To make a bigger splash, they sometimes take an underwater video camera with them.

Jeff and Paul have spent a lot of time looking for rockfish, so they know where the rockfish like to hang out. When Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans set aside Rockfish Conservation Areas (RCAs) where no one could take rockfish, Jeff was able to help.

The government had made an RCA near Popham Island, but Jeff knew that there was a place with a lot of rockfish just outside the protected boundaries. He asked the government and the sports fishing community to include that spot in the RCA. That way, the rockfish there would be safe from being fished.

The RCAs were started in 2004, so it’s too early to see if they’re keeping the rockfish safe. But Jeff and Paul have already noticed more rockfish in other areas near Vancouver that have been protected from rockfish fishing for awhile now. It’s cool to know that rockfish do come back if we leave them alone!

If you’re a diver in the Vancouver area, you can help Jeff and Paul count rockfish both inside and outside RCAs. Check it out!