Outside waters rockfish

Yes - if the fish was caught shallow enough (~200 feet or less) - shallow enough that the barotrauma is mild.

Not sure about 200 feet. In my experience, if you pull a Rockfish up from that depth it will have it's stomach pushed right out its mouth and its eye's bulged out from the bends/barotrauma and not be able to swim down and will just flop on the surface till it dies or gets taken out by birds and predators. In fact I would say that is true at shallower depths than 200 feet. Do you mean that testing has shown that 200 feet is the max depth that a Rockfish can be returned using a return tool and still survive the majority of the time and even then I would wonder about that at 200 feet. Historically if we were to pull a rockfish up from great depth (like 200 feet), usually while salmon fishing, we would use the one Rockfish retention rule in our area and put it in the fish box and then move away from that spot. I fish in an area that has lots of RCA areas protected on the charts and they would seem to be a more practical way of conserving Rockfish than these increasingly complex species specific rules that have identification issues.

I am curious as to if the other two sectors that commercial fish Rockfish also have the same return to the water by species rules and are also now required to use a return tool for all those species? Are Rockfish in RCA's protected from fishing by all sectors?
 
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No, rockfish - I mean that the available science out there (and there have been some studies) seems to suggest that fisheries that intercept and pull-up rockfish > ~200ft (some discussion as to exactly what depth/species where this occurs, but in the range of 200-300ft) the barotrauma is so great that mortality is greatly increased. So, limited benefit for fisheries using descenders & releasing fish caught deeper.

from DFO (https://waves-vagues.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/Library/40716120.pdf) they state:

Hannah et al. (2012) measured survival in cages over 48 hours later and showed 100 % survival for Canary, Quillback, Yelloweye, Copper, and China Rockfishes caught between 9-64 m of depth. Black and Blue Rockfishes showed an inverse relationship between capture depth and overall survival with rates of 90% and 78%, respectively. Hannah et al. (2014) compared Canary Rockfish with Yelloweye Rockfish caught at deeper depths (46-174 m) and found a 95% survival across all depths for the Yelloweye Rockfish, although slight declines in survivorship were seen with depth. Canary Rockfish survival declined to only 20% at capture depths greater than 135 m. Fish of both species that died were found to have blood pooling under the pharyngo-cleithral membrane, in the abdominal cavity, and/or the pericardial cavity. A further study found a similar 48 hr survival rate (89%) for Yelloweye Rockfish (Rankin et al. 2017). A mark-recapture study initiated in Alaska to determine the survival of Yelloweye Rockfish caught between 19 and 74 m, and released at depth using a deep-water release device, estimated survival for the recompressed fish was 0.988 with a 95% confidence interval of 0.478 to 0.999 (Blain and Sutton 2016). Some of these tagged fish were subsequently recaptured 1 and 2 years later and the results indicated that reproduction had not been compromised; recaptured Yelloweye Rockfish females remained reproductively viable even after two recompression events. In another study, acoustically tagged Cowcod, Bocaccio, and Bank Rockfishes returned to depths between 91 – 183 m using recompression devices and tracked in an acoustic array (Wegner et al. 2016) were observed to have a 72% survival for all species combined for over 10 days, and no mortalities for up to 4 months of monitoring; although some fish left the detection array. Bocaccio, the only species from this study found in BC, had a 92% survival rate over a 3 year time period (not including fish that left the array).
 
Additional Btw

I only eat a couple every summer it is a special deal , from line to table . I get how fragile and easy they are to catch .
 
I've been releasing gravid female rockfish for about 18 years or so now - but only found out about descenders in the past 5-10 or so. Only makes sense. There's typically not big numbers of them anyways - and it's roughly from this time of year into June that I remember finding them.
 
My rule for keeping rockfish is if it's too big for the plate, it's too big to keep.
I agree I'd way rather have a couple small fryers that fit into my wok. Then I don't have to share mine either.
 
Black cod are delicious, we caught some for the first time last summer and we couldn’t believe how tasty they were. Rock fish taste great, my wife and kid love fishing for them, that’s way more exciting to them then trolling. There was a few recent study out of the states that showed that yellow eye and some other bottom fish recovered way faster than was thought, seemed there was like a mass population explosion, they opened the commercial up in California as a result
 
Black cod are delicious, we caught some for the first time last summer and we couldn’t believe how tasty they were. Rock fish taste great, my wife and kid love fishing for them, that’s way more exciting to them then trolling. There was a few recent study out of the states that showed that yellow eye and some other bottom fish recovered way faster than was thought, seemed there was like a mass population explosion, they opened the commercial up in California as a result
I wonder who paid for that bogus study.
 
I've first tried black cod bought from a supermarket and it was really good. After finding out they can be caught here, I've been giving it a go here and there when I'm on the island but no luck so far in 3 seasons.
 
Still don't think anyone should be targeting dozens of them.

I do one or two "ling trips" a year. If we happen to catch a rockfish we keep what's legal. I'm happy enough with that to have as a treat every summer.

And don't get me wong in remote areas where we're taking maybe hundreds of guys fishing thousands of miles of coast, sure have your fill. But areas like Howe Sound and the Sunshine Coast are prime examples of what us assholes can do when left unchecked.
 
I have to apologise for posting misinformation upthread-the fish I meant to highlight was the Widow Rockfish/Sebastes Entomelas.

My excuse is that with at least 109 different types in the Sebastes genus they are easy misremember.

My other remarks about it being quick to hit sport gear and not worth the eating still stand.

1920px-Widow_rockfish_in_Soquel_Canyon.jpg
 
Black cod(Sablefish)? or you talking about Black Rockfish?
them black bass I think they are called, all schooled up around the kelp beds that get white washed
 
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