Sebastes,
You are right on and we are going to be working with WDFW, NOAA, and some of the charters as well as recreational anglers to get not only the fish descender device information out there, but also recreational angler rockfish identification.

Last year some guys got onto Canaries in Neah Bay and marketed them as Yelloweye. That helped put us over our ESA impacts and now as a result, MA 3/4 deep water is going to close May 1, 2013 to bottomfishing other than halibut days. Last year we got a reprieve of the 120' depth line to June 1. In the past it was May 21. So we have some major problems to fix. Even though Canaries are ESA listed in the ocean, they are not as bad as first thought. YE are the driver.

I work with NOAA on rockfish and one of their people did a rockfish identification test with the general public showing 6 bottomfish and you were to identify them. They were Quillback, Copper, Yelloweye, Boccacio, and Canary Rockish and then a lingcod. I believe only about 5% got them all right. So how can we managing our fisheries when our own recs cannot accurately identify their catch.

This also brings up another point is that Boccacio are ESA listed in the Puget Sound (so are YE and Canaries). Were they accurately identified way back or were they another fish? I have seen a couple of old pictures many years ago that an angler had of some in the PS.

Wayne Palsson that used to be the WDFW Puget Sound rockfish person told me that there were tagging studies showing that Boccacio and Canary Rockfish have been tracked to move as much as 200 miles. So how do we know that these fish were not transcient to some degree to begin with, before they were ESA listed?