Northwest Dive Club

About one year ago we had a meeting at Moss Bay Divers Club with guest speaker Tom from WSDFW.
We asked him a question: "Is there any critter that divers should report if found".
His answer was:" There is only one critter. It is any sighting of Yellow Eye Rockfish".

Yellow Eye Rockfish adults are almost never seen by divers but juveniles sometimes come to the shallower (if I can call 100sft, or 90sft as shallower) waters.

At the time I referred to him Jan Kocian sightings at Possession Point Fingers & Ferry.

I have read some past postings at NWDC about Les Davis and 100ft rock and obviously Jan's sightings.

I have not seen any until today.

I will dig out Toms contact and let him know.

Here are the pictures.
Unfortunately my camera jammed in Macro Setting and I could not change to Super Macro to get better close up but I think these should be good enough for you to see every angle.

Click on each to view full picture resolution.

This fish seem to be very shy and I felt sorry for her.
I just moved very slowly and tried to take only few pictures to avoid stressing her out.

If you want to hear more about Yellow Eye Rockfish I recomend you a posting from 2009 and great feedback provided by Janna Nichols " nwscubamom" .

http://www.nwdiveclub.com/viewtopic.php ... ish#p90458

So cool!
I haven't seen one in years.
I wonder if they're still around at 100' rock getting closer to breeding age?
I saw a mondo huge one once in the san juans!

What a cool find, thanks for sharing! I'd love to see one of those!

REEF.org is wonderfully set up to track ALL of your critter (fish) sightings and many invertebrates. I do surveys on every dive, and it is a hugely fun part of my dives. Membership is free, the data is public, and data is sorted by novice and expert categories for reliability. You can search by site and species and time frame. Most of our Puget Sound sites have had surveys done on them year round for many years and lots of data is available. Fish and Invert ID classes are given from time to time around the Sound, and is a great way to meet other critter geeks and add a fun and useful element to your diving. Feel free to PM me or hit me up for a dive sometime if you want to hear more.

Very cool.

Team,

I got a feedback from Robert (Bob) Pacunski Research Scientist at Wash. Dept. of Fish and Wildlife.
I actually did send the message through our Friend Wayne at NOAA (who worked with Bob in the past at WDFW) and official group mail for Fish Departament of WDFW.

Here is what Bob wrote to me in an email:
" Thanks for sending the photo. Wayne sent it to me this morning as well. Please continue to update me when you see yelloweye or canary rockfish, particularly the juveniles. "

I responded with some questions and here are more details:

As far as postings go, feel free to post photos of any yelloweye or canary that you or other divers run across. Either way of notification works for me, but if another diver sees a fish and doesn’t post then I would appreciate if they contact me directly. Feel free to post my contact info on the NWDC site. You are correct, the Vermilions have a much redder hue than the canarys. I doubt that you’ll run into many adult canary, but the juveniles will likely have the black spot on the first dorsal and will be pretty pale. We saw one with the ROV a few weeks ago but it was in 250 feet of water.
Take care and be safe!
Bob


Please either post your Yellow Eye Rockfish sightings pictures with location and date info here, or contact Bob directly at:
Robert.Pacunski@dfw.wa.gov
Juvenile are in particular important to Scientists,

I will make a separate posting for Canary Rockfish with pictures so it will be clear from the subject line what Scientist are looking for.


Cheers
Marek

Board member MightyMouse found a yellow eye rockfish yoy at SundRock recently!

I checked the REEF db, and there were no entries for YE yoy's at SundRock. We'll be sure Robert is notified. Thanks Marek for letting us know.

http://www.reef.org/db/reports/dist/spe ... 2016-01-01

Some friends of mine saw 3 yesterday at Sund- hopefully that's a good sign...

The DFW guy asked me to pass the following info on, when I reported my sighting
here's the link mentioned in the image: http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov ... sound.html