Along the West Coast, lingcod fish are top predators—voracious eaters that aren’t picky about where their next meal comes from. But lingcod in the Pacific Ocean used to be overfished, to the point where managers created protected areas for these fish and other depleted groundfish species, such as yelloweye and canary rockfish.
Lingcod have recovered well with commercial and recreational fishing restrictions and closures, called rockfish conservation areas, and now are benefitting from these “safe zones” where they can escape the net of a fisherman. Alternatively, some rockfish species also designated as overfished haven’t yet recovered, even with vast fishing closures.
Scientists at the University of Washington, including Kiva Oken, a doctoral student in quantitative ecology and resource management, together with The Nature Conservancy and West Coast fishermen are hoping to find a win-win solution to this imbalance. Specifically, the UW looked at whether fishing for lingcod in closed areas using an innovative approach could still allow sensitive species to continue recovering. Their study, published this month in the ICES Journal of Marine Science, found that selectively fishing for lingcod in protected areas actually avoided hampering the recovery of other fish, including rockfish species listed as overfished.
Read more at UW Today »