The Search for Tiny Young-of-the-Year Rockfish (Salish Sea Wild)

This animal is suffering from what marine biologists call RFF, resting fish face. While a common, normally benign condition, the scowl on this fish's kisser is likely because his family, the remarkable rockfishes of the Salish Sea, is struggling. Okay, you ready Justin? To help give him a reason to smile, C-Doc sets out on a rockfish recovery expedition. We're working with Amanda Bird and Adam Abeza of Powah Marine Research Group. We're confident we'll find adult rockfish, but for this special study, we're searching for something much more challenging. Welcome to Operation Babyfish. There are at least 28 species of rockfish in the Salish Sea, and they lead an assortment of lifestyles. The first ones we encounter are yellowtails. These are pelagic rockfish who spend most of their time schooling in mid-water. Rockfish can live extraordinarily long lives. The seniors in this school are likely 60 years old, but that's not even middle-aged for other species. The rougheye rockfish of northern waters can live more than 200 years, making it one of the longest-lived creatures on Earth. These big lunkers mingling with the yellowtails are their very close relatives, the black rockfish. Black rockfish love these steep drop-offs exposed to strong currents. They patrol between the protective wall and open water, hunting for forage fish like herring and sand lance, and watching for tasty crab larvae to drift by. Scientists recently discovered that some types of rockfish evolved to carry extra copies of genes that repair damaged DNA, reduce inflammation, regulate insulin, and boost immunity. These genetic modifications allow them to live long enough to become swimming antiques. There's even hope that rockfish research will someday help humans live longer, healthier lives. All rockfish belong to the Scropanidae family because each one carries an array of stinging spines. Warm water cousins of our local rockfish include the flamboyantly venomous lionfish and the stonefish, which is the most venomous in the world. Fortunately, the toxins in the spines of Salish Sea rockfish like this quillback are much, much less dangerous, but you still wouldn't want to sit on one. Similar to the quillback, the next species we record, the copper, has a more classic Rocky the Rockfish way of life. They prefer to hug the bottom around stony reefs and kelp beds. Coppers can spend their entire adult lives roaming one small territory. These inquisitive homebodies often escort divers as we swim around their neighborhoods. Chances are that we've seen the same individual copper rockfish over and over for decades at our favorite dive sites. The small tangerine beauties near this copper show how rockfish come in an amazing variety of colors and body types. These are full-size Puget Sound rockfish. They're another species that likes to bounce between the reefs and forming big schools in mid-water. This one with the hot flame paint job on his face is another bottom dweller, the brown rockfish. Here's a very cool find. This strikingly beautiful species is the tiger rockfish. They can live to be well over a hundred years old. We almost always see tigers sheltering inside caves during the day, but at dusk they'll come out to hunt for shrimp and crabs. Oh, score! It's not quite a baby, but this is a rare find. A juvenile yellow eye rockfish. For a fish geek like me, spotting one of these gorgeous little guys totally makes your month. Yellow eyes go through a dramatic color change. This bright orange adult yellow eye may have been born 150 years ago while Ulysses S. Grant was still president. And if she's a female, she could have produced her first brood before Washington state became a state. Because they're relatively big, spiny, and have those super longevity genes, adult rockfish have very low natural mortality. The problem is that they're easy to catch. And like other long-lived, slow-reproducing animals, removing too many adults causes their population to crash. That's what happened here in our waters. And now yellow eyes are one of two local rockfish placed on the endangered species list due to decades of overfishing. As a result, there is now no rockfishing at all allowed on the U.S. side of the Salish Sea. The great news is that a similar moratorium off the U.S. Pacific coast has resulted in rockfish populations bouncing back much faster than expected. So we're optimistic that they can also recover here, providing us with a healthier Salish Sea and plenty of fish for anglers and fish watchers alike. Well, here's something interesting. A Puget Sound rockfish that's not out in open water with the rest of her schoolmates. That swollen belly confirms it. Someone's going to have a baby. Actually, for a Puget Sound rockfish, it's more like someone's going to have 3,000 babies. If this was a large yellow-eyed female, it could even be 3 million. It's definitely baby season. We find more Puget Sound and Copper rockfish females in similar condition. They're all just a day or so away from giving birth. Studies show that the larger the rockfish female, the more eggs she carries per gram of body weight and the older she is, the healthier her young will be. This makes protecting the grandest of rockfish grannies the most critical factor in recovering their species. Of course, if a female is going to grow millions of babies inside her, they have to be tiny. To get an idea of their size, these newborn rockfish are navigating the peaks and valleys of a biologist's fingerprint. At first, the young stay near the surface, gobbling zooplankton. They're extremely vulnerable at this stage and they're an important food source for juvenile Chinook and other fish. They're also very sensitive to water quality and marine conditions. Most years, very few survive. After they grow to about an inch long, it's time for the rockfish babies to settle down. It's those new settlers that we're searching for. Scientists call them young of the year or yoys. To count as a yoy, the fish must be smaller than 10 centimeters or about four inches long. Here's a little one. This one turns out to be just a bit too large, but it's great that he or she has made it through that risky first year. Stay safe, little fella. We need all the rockfish we can get. When you're a bite-sized baby fish in a sea of sharp teeth, like this giant lingcod has, you want to be as hard to find as possible. This can make our surveys feel like we're hunting for sunken treasure. Eventually, we strike it rich. Oh, look at this little cutie. When they're this small, it can be hard to identify species, even for a fanatical fish geek. We write down every detail, but use a system where divers only need to note between two basic rockfish body shapes and whether the yoys have a spot on their dorsal fin or not. Doing this kind of research using traditional methods would mean dragging weighted nets across the bottom, damaging the habitat and killing the critters we're trying to save. But this crucial baby fish study, led by Adam and Amanda's research group and funded by NOAA Fisheries, is designed to have zero impact. SeaDoc has been involved in the project since it began in 2015, and we're just one of many partners. Over the years, a whole posse of volunteer citizen scientists, along with professional researchers, have scoured the Salish Sea's reefs, kelp forests, and grass beds in search of baby rockfish. In 2022 alone, survey divers spent 257 hours swimming 1,200 transects on more than 80 different sites. And like these little fish, the program just keeps on growing. Look at that adorable little baby, less than a year old and already displaying that Mick Jagger rockfish swagger. One of the coolest things about Salish Sea rockfish conservation is that it draws on the expertise of recreational fishers and divers, who often have more intimate knowledge of local fish than the professional scientists. It's part of nature that very few rockfish survive their first year, but because their mothers will keep breeding more and more successfully throughout their very long lives, if we can protect them, eventually the conditions will be just right, and they'll reward us with a great, big, beautiful rockfish baby bumper crop. Try saying that three times fast. To find out more about all different kinds of rockfish and how divers and fishers can help the recovery, visit seadocsociety.org forward slash rockfish. Yo Adrian, it's me Rocky!