HABITAT______________________________________

Healthy habitat is critical to healthy fish populations Not only does it, provide structure for protection against predation, complex habitats foster niches that support a great diversity of organisms, some acting as essential prey for the rockfish species covered in this report. Many commercially fished West Coast rockfish species and their prey rely heavily on realthy nearshore habitats such as shallow bays, and nearshore rocky areas at various stages of their lives (Table S/Appendix 3). Habitats such as shallow bays are a critical link in the reproductive cycle for many species as they are utilized as nursery areas. The young benefit from the naturally high food concentrations in these areas and the shelter the-vegetation and shallows provide. These are the areas most directly influenced by human development and pollution because of their proximity to human populations; therefore, these are the areas that require some of our most diligent attention and protection. It has been estimated that at least half of the wetlands in Oregon and ashington and about 90 percent of California's wetlands have already been lost to diking, filling, and development(PSMFC). The nearshore environment where estuaries, shallow bays and nearshore rocky areas are found are often impacted heavily by polluted runoff from adjacent cities, including oil leaking into storm sewers and fertilizers and pesticides running off farm and commercial timber land. Currently 2.5 billion people, 40 percent of the world's population, live within 100 km of the coast, and in the next 30 years that figure is estimated to rise to 6.3billion (McGinn 1998). An estimated 80-90 percent of the global commercial catch is taken within 320 km of shore (McGinn 1998). Understandably, this nearshore region is thought to have some of the highest rates of biological diversity and the richest fishing areas on the planet, although it is also one of the most susceptible to human impact. It is intuitive that for a system to work properly, all of its Parts must be intact. Habitat is one of the "parts" of a healthy marine ecosystem and must be kept healthy and intact for the system to function as it should.

The Sustainable Fisheries Act and Habitat

Rockfish have specific habitat requirements that vary depending on species and life stage. Fisheries management has long proceeded largely unresponsive to that critical reality. Now that approach to management must change. In 1996, federal law governing fisheries management, the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 ("Magnuson
Act"), underwent a major overhaul. The amendments, termed the Sustainable Fisheries Act (SFA), identified fish habitat as critical to healthy fish stocks and sustainable fisheries. Congress declared: "One of the greatest long-term threats to the viability of commercial and recreational fisheries is the continuing loss of marine, estuarine, and other aquatic habitats. Habitat considerations should receive increased attention for the conservation and management of fishery resources of the United States." The SFA launched a program to promote the protection of Essential Fish Habitat (EFH). Regional fishery management councils must develop recommendations to NFMS describing EFH for all species under their management. The documents for West Coast groundfish EFH include all species of rockfish managed by the Council.

Essential Fish Habitat is defined by the SFA as "those waters and substrate necessary for spawning, breeding, feeding, or growth to maturity." The Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC/Council) is required to amend its Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for groundfish, including rockfish, and identify EFH for all species. The PFMC must also
identify threats from fishing and nonfishing activities that could adversely affect EFH. This means any activity that reduces the duality or quantity of EFH. The amendment also must include actions the Council could take to avoid, minimize, or compensate for the impacts of those threats and must be completed by October 1998 (see Table 4). The current version of these amendments, put forth by the Pacific Fishery Management does, not comply with mandates in the Sustainable Fisheries Act due to the lack of identifiable management measures for the protection of EFH. In order to comply with the Act, the groundfish Fishery Management Plan (FMP) must be amended to include specific
and identifiable management measures that will minimize, to the extent practicable, adverse effects of fishing gear and fishing practices on EFH as well as specific actions encouraging conservation of EFH.

The vast diversity and abundance of habitat utilized by rockfish (as well as other groundfish species) was organized into "composite EFHs" in the West Coast EFH document. These are: estuarine, rocky shelf, non-rocky shelf, canyon, continental slope/basin, neritic zone, and oceanic zone. Various species of rockfish inhabit a variety of these habitats throughout stages in their life histories (see Table 3/Appedix 3). We currently do not have the knowledge of rockfish habitat required to quantify how much unimpacted habitat currently exists or how much is necessary to maintain healthy rockfish populations (NMFS 1998).

Table 4. Threats to Essential Fish Habitat as defined in the 1998 NMFS grounfish EFH document

All EFH information for rockfish in the "Essential Fish Habitat West Coast Groundfish Appendix" developed by NFMS is classified as level one. This level contains the least amount of information of four possible levels. It includes information only on: "Presence/absence distribution available for some or all portions of the geographic range of the species" (NMFS 1998). An increase in both the quality and quantity habitat data for West Coast rockfish is essential. This data could be incorporated into the management system through stock assessments, by creating a habitat inventory, and applying increased levels of habitat knowledge to the design and evaluation of marine refugia.

Habitat Impact and Alteration

Marine habitat diversity can be impacted and altered through the scraping, shearing, and crushing effects of fishing gear. Alteration of habitat by fishing activities is perhaps the least understood of environmental effects of fishing (Committee on Fisheries, Ocean Studies Board National Research Council 1994). This is indeed a contentious issue between the various factions involved in the fisheries for West Coast rockfishes. Partly because, while there is evidence that some of the research done on the issue of fishing gear impact on habitat in other areas can be applied to West Coast fisheries, the need for site specific data is critical.

The physical impacts of trawl gear can include plowing and scraping of the sea floor, penetrating the substrate to a depth of 30 cm in some instances, and resuspension of the sediment (PFMC 1998). The impacts of this "crushing and scraping" may include compaction of the sea floor, the removal and/or crushing of benthic organisms, alteration of the substrate by overturning rocks etc, and reducing the complexity of the habitat by crushing and redistributing rockpiles and other sources of structure. It is currently estimated that all of the ocean's continental shelves are trawled at least once every two years and some areas impacted several times a season (McGinn 1998). Longline gear also has the ability to impact bottom habitats. This gear type has been observed shearing marine plants, corals and sessile organisms from the bottom. Scientists in southeast Alaska made this observation of longline gear from a submersible; "Setline gear often lies slack on the sea-floor and meanders considerably along the bottom. During the retrieval
process the line sweeps the bottom for considerable distances before lifting off the bottom. It snags whatever objects are in its path, including rocks and corals. Smaller rocks are upended, hard corals are broken, and soft corals appear unaffected by the passing line."(PFMC 1998.) Although very little research has been done on the effect of pot and trap gear, it is thought that pot gear may crush organisms as it settles and longlined pots may act much like standard longline gear and snag benthic animals during its retrieval (PFMC 1998).

Little work has been none on the effect of fishing gear on habitat on the West Coast. Consequently, resource managers, scientists, and conservationists find themselves struggling to prove that different types of fishing gear damage habitat, while users of the gear enjoy a presumption that it causes no harm. The management process is thus reactive
instead of proactive. Managers wait to try to protect habitat until the damage has been done and can be "proven."

Evaluation is needed of both the immediate economic loss resulting from imposed gear restrictions and the long-term economic loss due to damage to the ecosystem and length of recovery time resulting from unrestricted gear use. Consideration is due both interests, but the near-term economic values can no longer be given precedence; the urgency of the declining fisheries will no longer permit that approach to management.

Skip McMaster, a commercial fisherman of 17 years, in a letter to Pacific Fishing magazine identified steps that must be taken to facilitate the recovery of declining rockfish stocks. Considering habitat destruction by fishing gear in terms of a human community, he emphasized the need to "address habitat destruction in crucial reef areas so babies have a spot to thrive. If I bulldozed your house today, I doubt you would stay there tonight." Many fish, especially rockfish, are attracted strongly to structure. When that structure is lost, so are the species that associate heavily with it.

Declining complexity and biodiversity of habitat.
Should we be concerned?

A direct result of habitat alteration by fishing gear can be bycatch and a modification in the complexity of the habitat. It is generally accepted that habitats with increased complexity are more productive and tend to support a greater diversity of species (Naeem et al. 1994, PFMC 1998). The argument that nutrients are not lost from system if bycatch organisms removed from the marine environment are thrown back dead is not completely valid. During the life span of these organisms the nutrients they would have processed and make available to other organisms in their community would have been in a different form than that when they are returned to the system dead. Species taken as bycatch and thrown back dead lose the opportunity to significantly contribute to the delicate balance of the food web by being a step in the process of utilizing and passing on nutrients. The ultimate result of this instantaneous removal and replacement of nutrients in a system can be to alter the assemblage of species that live there. Opportunistic species may invade and ultimately replace the current residents, who are at a distinct disadvantage in their inability to process nutrients in the form of whole, dead organisms. If we are dependent on the balance of the current assemblage to provide us with commercially relevant species, and to provide these commercial species with their prey, the long term effects of our activities of removing large numbers of organisms as bycatch equates to shooting ourselves in the