Use of a Novel Cage System to Measure Postrecompression Survival of Northeast Pacific Rockfish

We used a caging system designed to minimize the adverse effects of caging fish in marine waters to evaluate the discard mortality of seven species of rockfish Sebastes with barotrauma. Altogether, 288 rockfish were captured, scored for barotrauma, evaluated behaviorally at the surface, and caged individually on the seafloor for 48 h to determine survival. With the exception of three blue rockfish S. mystinus , the condition of surviving fish after cage confinement from 41 to 71 h was excellent. At capture depths up to 54 m, survival was 100% for yelloweye rockfish S. ruberrimus ( n = 25) and copper rockfish S. caurinus ( n = 10) and 78% for blue rockfish ( n = 36). At capture depths up to 64 m, survival was 100% for canary rockfish S. pinniger ( n = 41) and quillback rockfish S. maliger ( n = 28) and 90% for black rockfish S. melanops ( n = 144). Black rockfish survival was negatively associated with capture depth (m) and the surface–bottom temperature differential (°C). Blue rockfish survival was negatively associated with capture depth. Barotrauma signs and surface behavior scores were not good indicators of survival potential across species but were useful within species. In black and blue rockfish, severe barotrauma was negatively associated with survival, while higher scores on reflex behaviors at the surface were positively associated with survival. The high survival rates and excellent condition of some species in this study suggest that requiring hook‐and‐line fishers to use recompression devices to help discarded rockfish return to depth may increase survival for some species. Received April 14, 2011; accepted July 30, 2011