Behind the scenes with Research Diver Paul Malcolm

Monica:  Hi, my name is Monica Stewart, and I'm a youth volunteer here at the Aquarium, and today I’m going to be interviewing Paul Malcolm, a diver for rockfish research here at the Aquarium.

Monica:  So Paul, how much trouble are the rockfish in?

Paul:  I guess you would call it a crisis.  My boss, Dr. Jeff Marliave, thinks it’s probably the biggest ongoing crisis in B.C. fisheries.  They have been overfished and their populations are at extremely low levels of abundance compared to what they have been historically.  Rockfish are interesting fish because a lot of them can live for well over a hundred years, much, much longer than we can.  They may only have three years per hundred years where conditions are right for strong survival.

Monica:  And how does your work here at the Aquarium help protect rockfish?

Paul:  Fisheries and Oceans Canada has, in the last year and a half, set aside a number of areas called Rockfish Conservation Areas where all fishing activities that might cause rockfish mortality are banned.  And what we’ve been doing is going into these areas and surveying the numbers of rockfish there.  We’ve also been surveying other areas that aren’t protected, and we hope that the data we give them will influence which areas are best suited for Rockfish Conservation Areas.

Monica:  If you could share your experiences and knowledge about rockfish, what’s one thing you’d tell people that they probably don’t know about rockfish?

Paul:  You catch a rockfish and it dies.  That’s like one of the weird things about rockfish.  You get, it’s not like salmon they can reel it up and let it go.

Monica:  Oh, because of the pressure?

Paul:  Yeah, there’s a few species that it doesn’t have that effect on, but the majority of them, if you catch it that big, it’s like dead when it hits the surface.

Monica:  What has your favourite rockfish diving experience been?

Paul:  I don’t think one particular rockfish experience has impacted me so much as just the general experiences I have diving with rockfish.  Like, they have personalities to me now. Not to anthropomorphize too much, but, I don’t know, there’s something about a little fish being so bold as to just swim into your face. Yeah, I like rockfish now.  I like them a lot.  And I think before I worked here, I was fairly indifferent to them.  But yeah, I always look forward to seeing them.