Jeff Marliave:

My name is Jeff Marliave, and I’m the fish research scientist at the Vancouver Aquarium. I have a team that works in both a laboratory where we raise baby fish, and goes diving out in the field where we look at the natural history of the same animals.

One of the types of animals that we like to display to the public in the Vancouver Aquarium; rockfish include a great many species, about three dozen species in British Columbia, rockfish are a concern near the shoreline because a half dozen inshore species of rockfish, including the quillback, copper rockfish have been seriously depleted in recent years.

Vancouver Aquarium Presents:
Taking the Plunge: Rockfish Conservation

In February of 2004 the federal government set aside nearly 100 Rockfish Conservation Areas. The Aquarium had the latitude to immediately start surveying the abundance of rockfish in four Rockfish Conservation Areas in Howe Sound, just outside of Vancouver. The rule is, that inside a Rockfish Conservation Area, no harm can come to rockfish. You can go diving, you can do a number of things, but there is no hook-and-line fishing for any kind of fish.

Today we’re diving off the west side of Popham Island because we’re inside one of the Rockfish Conservation Areas. We know that there are a couple of very good reefs off the west side of Popham Island and we want to get accurate counts of the numbers of rockfish on these particular rock piles.

Donna Gibbs: So we’re too far east, right?
Jeff Marliave: No, we’re too far west, according to this.

New zipper, old suit.
Shiny new pretty suit. There you go.

It takes a few minutes to get into a dive suit and get it properly adjusted. It’s very important the neck seal and wrist seals are perfect otherwise you’re going to have a flooded suit, and a miserable cold dive. Two divers who know each other and work well together can be extremely effective. If one diver has any kind of trouble, the other diver there will keep the person calm, and it’s very important to be able to work together if you’re working with any kind of gear underwater.

Not everybody’s comfortable diving; it can be kind of scary. You tend to get a sense of claustrophobia being trapped in all this gear, if you lose your balance you can actually not know which way is up. For a lot of people, getting the next breath is the only thought you have.

The last glacier that came through gouged over hard and soft rock and left these two nearby pinnacle areas, both of which have slides of lose rock rubble. That’s the kind of habitat that rockfish can hide in. That’s were they like to live.

We saw a good abundance of just one species, and almost entirely mature adults. Those were quillback rockfish. That’s the kind of population you want to see protected so it’s wonderful to get that kind of a broodstock population inside of a Rockfish Conservation Area.

Donna Gibbs: Are you Ok?
Paul Malcolm: Yeah I’m fine.

Jeff Marliave: So you told me there was a tiger under a rock right?
Conor McCracken: Yeah, I found a tiger.
Jeff Marliave: And up top there was a vermillion.
Conor McCracken: I got a juvenile too, I got some things you didn’t get.
Jeff Marliave: Ok, so then 15 coppers, plus your coppers, plus a vermillion…I put down your tiger. That’s good. That was a good count.

Through time, we will see the abundance of rockfish increase inside Rockfish Conservation Areas and we’ll see more and more big, mature, pregnant females, and we’ll know that little baby rockfish are being exported all along the coast with the currents.

Through research, Dr. Marliave and the dive team hope to learn more about the habits of rockfish, and the types of habitat that need protection in British Columbia.

Special Thanks:
Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada
Don Garnett
Bernie Hanby