Rockfish & Cabezon Early Life History & Survival

With our move to Oregon, we began collaborations with local experts to work on fishes in the northern California Current.

Daniel Ottmann (shown left) completed his M.S. thesis using a time series of rockfish recruitment to marine reserves and non-reserve comparison areas off the Oregon coast. This field sampling is an ongoing collaboration with Dr. Kirsten Grorud-Colvert (Integrative Biology, OSU), the Oregon Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, and the Oregon Coast Aquarium. A laCaxia fellowship from Spain and several smaller grants enabled Dani to produce three publications (Ottmann 2016, 2018, 2019).

Another collaboration that uses this recruitment time-series, as well as offshore fish collections by Dr. Ric Brodeur’s NOAA lab, is allowing Will Fennie to examine the growth and survival of several rockfish species as they make the transition from offshore to nearshore reefs (Fennie et al. 2020 and others forthcoming).

Megan Wilson is collaborating with the same group of researchers to examine the early life of another recreationally, commercially, and ecologically important fish, cabezon. Megan is also examining the role of marine reserves to nearshore patterns of recruitment.

Outreach

This collaborative project has resulted in a variety of outreach materials, many of which were created by our collaborators.