Where Are The Ling Cod?

Fish & Invertebrate sightings and descriptions, hosted by resident NWDC ID expert Janna Nichols (nwscubamom).
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Tom Nic
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Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by Tom Nic »

OK, so I dive Three Tree North. A lot. Right around 300 dives worth in the last few years.

I do REEF surveys on every dive, and have been a member of the REEF AAT for several years, so I pay pretty close attention to the fish and invert life that I see.

I've been thinking, "Hmmm.... I don't remember seeing Ling Cod lately!?" Usually every Winter there are at least a few nests, usually guarded by a smallish male. Haven't seen a one this year. Perhaps they are there and I've missed them? But even if you've seen one, my point is that they simply aren't around like they were even a couple of years ago.

"Hey! Why not check the REEF database and see?!?" So I did! I ran the data in 2 years increments, figuring I would get better results by a bit broader sampling.

And...
From 2007 to 2009 (March to March) Ling Cod were reported on 81.8% of all REEF surveys done at TTN.

From 2009 to 2011 Ling Cod were reported on 71.1% of all REEF surveys done at TTN.

From 2011 to Present Ling cod were reported on only 28.6 % of all REEF surveys done at TTN.

That is a HUGE drop, in my opinion, and too large a number to be a seasonal drop or statistical anomaly.

I also ran the numbers at Redondo, and they are 2007-2009, 55%, 2009-2011, 51.1, & 2011 to present only 26.3% Also a significant drop

My question is, Why? Spear fishing at an "easy", popular dive site? General Population decrease in the Sound? What is causing this?

Color me curious, and a bit concerned...
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by LCF »

Interesting. I haven't seen any decrease in lings at C2 -- in fact, although I don't have the numbers you have, I think there are more this year than I have seen in a while. There is certainly no shortage of them at Edmonds, and they're sitting on top of one another on the Pinnacle in Hood Canal.
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by Tom Nic »

I concur - about Edmonds and the Pinnacle, and I haven't dove the Coves in quite awhile.

If I was a little more savvy I could run the numbers for the Sound in general, but I'm not sure how.

My observations are admittedly for the South Sound, and specifically TTN and Redondo. That was one of the reasons that speculated on spear fishing there.

Not in front of my computer now, but I will run the numbers at other popular sites as well.
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by Grateful Diver »

I dived TTN last week-end for the first time in quite a while ... maybe a year or more. I was surprised at how little life I saw there.

Another thought too ... where are all the local nudis? Until two or three years ago I would be almost guaranteed to see three or four different species on pretty much any dive at Cove 2, Redondo, or TTN. Lately I've been seeing almost exclusively just a few white-lined dironas ... and not much else of anything. Can't remember when was the last time I saw a golden dirona or clown dorid at Cove 2, and I used to see them there all the time. Same goes for several species I used to see regularly at Redondo.

I don't think it's a seasonal thing, because it's been like that for at least a couple years now ...

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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by dphershman »

iv'e been amazed at the loss of life at the most popular sites I've been to these past couple of years as well. There's hardly any nudibranchs anymore at Redondo, even at Sund Rock last weekend there were only a handful. What's up? Its a good question.
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by ORDiver »

It seems to me like Redondo and TTN have never been the same since that big storm that tore them up a couple years ago. I rarely go to either one anymore because of the lack of anything to see.
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by Greg Jensen »

The populations of most things that have planktonic larvae can vary tremendously due to differences in recruitment. Larvae are largely at the mercy of currents; in some years we don't get any settlement of Dungeness crab because they all got carried up to Canada or drifted too far offshore to make it back. Three or four years later, when those would be entering the fishery, everyone wonders why there are no crab (mismanagement! pollution! Indians!) when it really isn't anyone's 'fault'. Nature wasn't designed to give us a reliable, constant supply of food. For that we have KFC.

The recruitment of nudibranchs and most other inverts hasn't been studied much because people don't fish for them. Our perceptions of the fluctuations differ a lot due to the different time scales involved- nudibranchs have very short life spans, so poor recruitment in a couple of years really jumps out at us. On the other hand, seastars live for decades so always seem to be around and spawning every year. But it may be decades between times of successful recruitment. At some of the sites I visit regularly, I'll won't see newly-settled Pycnopodia for ten years or more, then suddenly they're everywhere. We don't notice the fluctuations because the adults are always hanging around, but if people started eating them, the fluctuations would become very apparent (and they'd get wiped out in a hurry).

Since lingcod are fairly long-lived and these weren't massive, old fish that disappeared, my guess is that they were caught by someone or something.
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by LCF »

It's been fascinating, in just the seven years I've been diving here, to watch the tremendous changes in populations. The first year I dove here, I saw no black rockfish. A couple of years later, they were everywhere, in pretty large numbers. The pilings at Cove 2 were full of them. They're almost gone now. The same with the banner octopus year about three years ago -- so many GPOs that I did a dive at Sunrise where we literally couldn't count them all. I got used to seeing a half dozen on every Cove 2 dive. Not this year!

It sure seems as though, to know anything useful about total populations or population health, you have to keep good records over more than a decade. I would imagine that makes fishery management very difficult.
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by WylerBear »

And why doing fish surveys for REEF is so helpful.
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by Tom Nic »

WylerBear wrote:And why doing fish surveys for REEF is so helpful.
:supz:

Simple citizen science. And the more divers we have doing surveys the more data you have as opposed to anecdotal memory.


Just spent an evening at a local dive club talking REEF. Warmly received but only about 3 sign ups.

OK, commercial done. :)
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by NollyG »

Tom Nic wrote:OK, so I dive Three Tree North. A lot. Right around 300 dives worth in the last few years.

I do REEF surveys on every dive, and have been a member of the REEF AAT for several years, so I pay pretty close attention to the fish and invert life that I see.

I've been thinking, "Hmmm.... I don't remember seeing Ling Cod lately!?" Usually every Winter there are at least a few nests, usually guarded by a smallish male. Haven't seen a one this year. Perhaps they are there and I've missed them? But even if you've seen one, my point is that they simply aren't around like they were even a couple of years ago.

"Hey! Why not check the REEF database and see?!?" So I did! I ran the data in 2 years increments, figuring I would get better results by a bit broader sampling.

And...
From 2007 to 2009 (March to March) Ling Cod were reported on 81.8% of all REEF surveys done at TTN.


From 2009 to 2011 Ling Cod were reported on 71.1% of all REEF surveys done at TTN.

From 2011 to Present Ling cod were reported on only 28.6 % of all REEF surveys done at TTN.

That is a HUGE drop, in my opinion, and too large a number to be a seasonal drop or statistical anomaly.

I also ran the numbers at Redondo, and they are 2007-2009, 55%, 2009-2011, 51.1, & 2011 to present only 26.3% Also a significant drop

My question is, Why? Spear fishing at an "easy", popular dive site? General Population decrease in the Sound? What is causing this?

Color me curious, and a bit concerned...

I've got a hypothesis here that I've been rattling around in my head for the past few days. This is not based on anything but personal observation, a paper I read (admittedly regarding rockfish, not lingcod), and conversations I had a few years back with some NOAA fisheries scientists.

Before I get started, let me be very clear. I'm not claiming to know the answer, but only to have found a question that could be tested. Again, this is a theory, and would require potentially years of research to confirm or discredit!

To start off, I used to think that lingcod and rockfish (for the purposes of my theory I'm including rockfish in my discussion) were associated with a particular reef for their whole lives. They drifted along as larvae until they grew to a certain size when they settled out, picked some kind of structure (natural rocky reef, artificial reef, wreck, etc...), and spent the rest of their lives on that reef, and in some cases, on that spot on the reef. In reality, for rockfish at least, that is not always true (Palsson, W. A., et al. 2009. Found at http://wdfw.wa.gov/publications/00926/wdfw00926.pdf). How rocky or irregular the habitat is, and the amount of crevasses to hide in, will determine if the rockfish (and here I'm assuming lingcod have similar habitat connections) will stick around. If the reef doesn't meet their needs (structure, food availability, mate availability, etc...) the fish will move on in search of a better reef.

This means that depending on the time of year (or maybe not) or, depending on the amount of habitat in an area, there should be adult age lingcod and rockfish, moving around, looking for an ideal reef to permanently settle on. Possibly spending extended times at one location (maybe days or even years) then moving on. How far and wide are they searching? I don't know, but I do know that other species that I used to assume didn't move much, can move around surprisingly often and far.

Here I'm talking about English Sole. In 2009-2010 I worked on a research project for UW, looking at fish and crab movements in Hood Canal related to low dissolved oxygen events. We tagged sole with hydro-accoustic tags and monitored their movements. It quickly became clear that the sole were moving a lot! We would find a fish one day, and within a couple of days it would be several miles north, or have crossed to the other side of the canal. These kind of movements were seen with all the sole we tagged throughout the project. The point is, that my perception as a recreational diver of English Sole sitting on the bottom and moving very little, was not an accurate depiction of their lives.

So we have lingcod and rockfish that might be moving around, looking for a reef. They find some artificial structure at TTN or Redondo and hang out for a time. Maybe a few days later, maybe a few years later, they move on. I'm not saying that there isn't nice structure for a diver to explore at these sites, mind you! I've had great dives at both! But from a fishes perspective, they may not be able to meet all of their needs on the relatively small, artificial structures found there.

But that doesn't explain the relatively recent drop of lingcod numbers at TTN and Redondo. Looking at the REEF data that Tom Nic mentioned, it wasn't until 2009 that the lingcod numbers seemed to drop. What changed in 2009? That's the question, and here comes the key to my theory.

That was the year that the new artificial reef was built at Saltwater State Park. Out of nowhere, there was a relatively large reef, with high relief structure and lots of crevasses to hide in. All those lingcod and rockfish swimming around, had found a pretty good place to call home. Diving there, I was amazed at how quickly after the reef was built, I was seeing recruitment (fish moving into, and settling in on the reef) of lingcod and rockfish. Particularly, interesting to me was that they were mainly adult fish, not YOY juveniles. I could only explain it, if the fish were leaving surrounding areas and searching for better habitat, which they had found. In fact, the Palsson paper cited two papers (Buckeley and Hueckel 1985, Laufle and Pauly 1985., neither of which I read) regarding the addition of artificial reefs that had already confirmed my suspicions. Maybe the drop of lingcod at both TTN and Redondo can be explained, at least in part, by the introduction of the new habitat at Saltwater. Looking at Google Earth, Redondo is only about 1.6 miles from Saltwater, and TTN is about 6 miles. Sounds like a long way, but if an English Sole can move several miles in a couple of days in Hood Canal, I think is certainly plausible that a lingcod could swim 6 miles (possibly over a long period, essentially hopping from one sub-optimal reef to the next) to get to Saltwater. Once there, they settled in and stopped moving around.

One more thing. The REEF surveys from before 2009 had higher numbers of lingcod than after. So, were the lingcod before 2009 permanently settled at TTN or Redondo, and somehow sensed there was better habitat at Saltwater and took off in that direction? I doubt it. I'm thinking, that the lingcod at both sites were actually not as permanent as it would seem. Perhaps they regularly left and searched for a larger reef or a mate, only to come back when they were unsuccessful or the breeding season was over. Over the long term, divers continued to see lingcod because the searching fish were leaving and coming back. The lingcod's luck changed with the new reef at Saltwater. Once there was a large reef with lots of breeding options at Saltwater, why go back?

Anyway, Long, long story short...it may be Saltwater that essentially stole the lingcod from TTN and Redondo. All of this would have to be tested, of course.

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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by NollyG »

Whoops! Quick correction. Tom Nic noted the lingcod drop was from 2011 to present, not 2009 as I stated. New addition to my theory. It took a period of time for the lingcod numbers to drop at TTN and Redondo, essentially a lag time, before the fish were "finding" Saltwater and staying there.

Well...that certainly makes my theory and the associated rant look bad! I can't even get the facts straight! Ah well...It's just a hypothesis anyway.

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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by Tom Nic »

Interesting thoughts....

I was sharing my REEF data at a dive club meeting and someone voiced the same theory, based on the "hundreds" of Ling Cod they saw at Saltwater on a dive this Fall.

I need to push myself to do more dives and surveys there. Needing to hit it on slack narrows the window, and narrowing it further is the park's dusk closing in the Winter (PROMPTLY at 4 PM!?!!).
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by Jan K »

NollyG,
I like your theory.
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by enchantmentdivi »

The ling cod are at Keystone. Countless, big ones, little ones, ugly ones, ones on eggs, ones with two-toned heads. Ling cod--everywhere at Keystone!
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by Jan K »

enchantmentdivi wrote:The ling cod are at Keystone. Countless, big ones, little ones, ugly ones, ones on eggs, ones with two-toned heads. Ling cod--everywhere at Keystone!
They like it there. Plenty of fish to eat, not being hunted and being admired by all the bubble blowing
visitors too :rofl:
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by Jeremy »

No, the ling cod are at Edmonds. Hundreds...and you don't have to put it in quotes.

:)

I like Nolly's theory too. There are a lot of lings at Saltwater.
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by renoun »

I know that Al Solonsky?, one of the fisheries biologists my father worked with, had a thesis project that tracked the location of individual ling cod in the San Juans. I think he was a UW student, he probably would have been a student in the mid to late 1970's, possibly in the early 1980's. My recollection was that he tracked individual fish to specific locations over long periods of time. I've never seen the paper and am not sure that I spelled his name correctly but anybody with access to UW libraries or the UW Fisheries archives should be able to track it down.
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by Dusty2 »

Interesting theory. Last year there were quite a few young lings at Point Hudson but the last few months I have seen none. To go farther the nudibranch population has diminished drastically too both in numbers and in varieties. I heartily agree on the nudie population at Redondo. When I first started diving there it was a very interesting site with lots of nudies. Now I seldom see any. I believe the strong winter storms there two years in a row Pretty well decimated the populations of many critters there and it may be years before they build again. to add to that the close proximity to Saltwater could very likely be a contributing factor. When you think about it Redondo does not have much at all to offer large predators looking for a home with a ready food source.
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by LCF »

I don't know; in the summertime, when the sea lettuce is abundant, Redondo is FULL of small sculpins, perch, and gunnels. In fact, the biodiversity and numbers of small fish certainly exceed a place like the Alki Fishing Reef, which usually has a pretty good complement of lings.
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by dphershman »

the problem with the 'where are the lingcod' theory of moving to Saltwater is that overall, there's less life at Redondo than ever before. I've only been diving at Redondo for 8 years, but that change the last couple of years has been dramatic. Lately I've not spotted a single nudibranch there, when there used to be 4 or 5 species in abundance. Something else is going on besides Lings moving to better digs me thinks.

I do agree however with the observation that all the lings have moved to Keystone. They were SO thick at there last Saturday you couldn't even begin to count 'em!


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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by fnerg »

At Alki Junkyard, which isn't too dissimilar from Three Tree and Redondo:

2011-2013: 3% sightings
2009-2011: 31.3% sightings
2007-2009: 0 sightings
2005-2007: 0 sightings

Of course, at Redondo,

2011-2013: 26.5%
2009-2011: 51%
2007-2009: 54.7%
2005-2007: 7.7%

So, lots of variation in those sites too, and not just for the last year. Alki Junkyard gets way fewer surveys than Three Tree or Redondo, but there ya go.
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by fnerg »

Cove 2:

2011-2013: 69.8%
2009-2011: 78.9%
2007-2009: 70.7%
2005-2007: 69.3%

Mukilteo T-Dock

2011-2013: 44.4%
2009-2011: 73.9%
2007-2009: 61.9%
2005-2007: 0 (Only 6 surveys!)

Alki Pipeline:

2011-2013: 52.9% (17 surveys)
2009-2011: 57.1% (14 surveys)
2007-2009: 71.4% (7 surveys)
2005-2007: 36.4% (11 surveys)

Edmonds never dips below 90% (duh) from 2005-2013, neither does Alki Fishing Reef, which has had very few surveys done.

So it looks like 2007-2011 actually saw a rise in Ling Cod all across the sound, and now we're returning to 2005-ish levels. Maybe it's a natural boom/bust sort of thing, like as small fish populations rise, large fish populations rise afterward, and then decline again as they eat more of the small fish. The decline of the large fish lets the small fish population rise again, and you get a boom/bust cycle.

I dunno, I'm no fish scientist or nuthin'.
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by fnerg »

One last post to back up the idea that this isn't necessarily unusual, Ling Cod sightings at Three Tree from 2005-2007 were on 29% of 100 surveys, evenly split between expert and novice.

Three tree itself conforms to the same sort of curve that we see in the rest of the sound for this time period.

If Ling Cod populations follow a sine wave, we'll be seeing a lot more of them around 2017. Of course, I didn't actually look far back enough to make that assumption, and again, I'm not one of you highfalutin' scientist types. I'm just a lowly english major.

BTW, John Wolfe gave a really good presentation in Monterey about the REEF data collected there from 1997 till now. One tidbit was that blue rockfish and kelp greenling numbers saw a hump from about 2003-2007, and that juvenile rockfish numbers saw a dip at the same time. After the blue rockfish and kelp greenling numbers declined, juvenile rockfish numbers increased again, showing evidence of a boom/bust cycle like I was talking about.
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Re: Where Are The Ling Cod?

Post by LCF »

It is really interesting to watch the populations change. One species I've noted markedly decreased is the painted greenling. From 2005, when I got certified, to maybe a year or two ago, they were so common at Cove 2 that one more or less ignored them. I can't remember the last time I saw one there. I used to take a lot of pictures of them, because they sit still. On the other hand, I did a dive off the Pac Adventures boat a month or two ago, and they were EVERYWHERE on the pinnacle out there.
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