Canary rockfish (Sebastes pinniger) COSEWIC assessment and status report: chapter 5

COSEWIC status report
on the
Canary Rockfish
Sebastes pinniger
in Canada
2007

Species Information

Name and classification

The canary rockfish, or sébaste canari (Sebastes pinniger), is one of 102 species of rockfish belonging to the genus Sebastes of which 96 species are found in the North Pacific (Love et al. 2002). The scientific names are from the Greek sebastos (magnificent) and the Latin pina (fin) and gero (to bear) (Hart 1973), which has been interpreted to mean “I bear a large fin” (Love et al. 2002). At least 36 species of rockfish have been found in Canada’s Pacific waters (Graham Gillespie, pers. comm.) with the number growing coincident with advances in DNA research (Gharrett et al. 2005). At the present time, there are no identified subspecies of canary rockfish. Canary rockfish have been referred to by many other names including orange rockfish, snapper, red snapper, and fantail rockfish. They are often confused with other red or yellow rockfish such as yelloweye rockfish (S. ruberrimus).


Morphological description

Mature canary rockfish are primarily mottled orange in colour with a pale grey or white background (Love et al. 2002). They have three distinctive bright orange stripes that lie diagonally across the head. The lateral line is well demarcated and is either white or grey extending anteriorly from the caudal fin. Their fins are bright orange. The anal fin is pointed with the outside edge strongly slanted towards the anterior (Mecklenburg et al. 2002). The caudal fin is strongly indented (Love et al. 2002).


Genetic description

No genetics studies have been conducted on Canadian specimens. Genetics work by Wishard et al. (1980) indicated restricted gene flow between populations in northern California and northern Washington, but the results were inconclusive. Preliminary work on nine polymorphic microsatellite loci has been described by Gomez-Uchida et al. (2003). They noted that the polymorphism at the nine loci revealed 6-28 alleles with expected heterozygosities ranging from 0.42-0.88. This led them to conclude that high-resolution population structure could be investigated for this species.


Designatable units

Canary rockfish have been managed in Canada’s Pacific waters as two assumed stocks: a southern or west coast of Vancouver Island stock (Pacific Marine Fisheries Commission Areas 3C+3D) and a central or Queen Charlotte Sound stock (PMFC Area 5A+5B) (Stanley 1999, see also the Pacific Groundfish Management PlanFootnote 4) (Fig. 1).

 


Figure 1: Spatial distribution of catches of canary rockfish in B.C. as recorded in commercial trawl observer logbooks (1996-2004)

Spatial distribution of catches of canary rockfish in B.C. as recorded in commercial trawl observer logbooks (1996-2004).

Also shown are the Pacific Marine Fisheries Commission (PMFC) Area designations.

There is evidence of a partial natural stock boundary near the northern tip of Vancouver Island, separating the southern Coastal Upwelling Domain (Baja California to 50.5° N) and the Coastal Downwelling Domain (50.5° N to the Aleutian Islands) (Ware and McFarlane 1988, King 2005). Some populations of groundfish on either side of this boundary do not seem to vary synchronously: for example recruitment between these regions is asynchronous for silvergray rockfish (Stanley and Kronlund 2000) and movement patterns for sablefish differ between these regions (Kimura et al. 1997).

Canary rockfish are also present in PMFC Areas 5C, 5D and 5E, particularly the southern portion of 5C and all of 5E, but trawl landings from these areas have been limited owing to the lack of trawlable ground, particularly in 5E. Thus, no assessments have been conducted on these populations. The stock boundaries were not based on biological evidence, but rather a precautionary measure to distribute the fishing mortality given the possibility of stock structure.

The B.C. population probably overlaps to some extent with U.S. populations. The California to Washington population is assessed as a single stock (Methot and Stewart 2005).

Although canary rockfish to the north and to the south of the northern tip of Vancouver Island might be considered two populations (consistent with stock separation for fishery management purposes), there is presently no basis to assign more than one designatable unit for canary rockfish and the species is considered to be a single designatable unit in Canada’s Pacific waters for this report.

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