Northwest Dive Club

Yesterday, at Northwest Island, it seemed as though every sheltered crack in the rock had a whole bunch (a dozen or more) small, brown fish. They were long and slender (but not tubesnout-shaped), one to two inches long and probably less than a half inch tall. They were also VERY skittish, and although I tried for pictures, I didn't get any good ones. The two I'm showing here are not very good pictures, but given what was going on, I'm happy I got them at all.

Are these very, very juvenile rockfish, or something else altogether? They were not sitting on structure like a sculpin but were schooled in the water column.

They look like YOY (young of year) Rockfish.

+ 1
Keystone right now is full of all kinds of rockfish ( I think) youngsters ..

That's what I thought they probably were, but man, they were small!

Always tough to ID YOY. that's why they have a separate designation for them. They can be so different from the adults. The inside of the barge a Hudson looks like an aquarium right with the schools of new baby fishes and they don't seem to be to afraid either. Not to many adults around so I guess it's an official nursery.

LCF wrote:That's what I thought they probably were, but man, they were small!

On some of the REEF AAT trips Janna and a couple of other folks have busted out I'D slides for Young of Year Rockfish. Different species have very different YOY coloration - for the most part very distinct to the species. A good side on photo can generally be identified and there are even categories on the I'D forms for YOY Canary, or YOY Copper, etc.

So far that is a bit beyond my paygrade, however. I will look them up if I get a good YOY shot, but they can be hard to come by.

Dusty2 wrote:Always tough to ID YOY. that's why they have a separate designation for them. They can be so different from the adults. The inside of the barge a Hudson looks like an aquarium right with the schools of new baby fishes and they don't seem to be to afraid either. Not to many adults around so I guess it's an official nursery.

You should work on getting good side shots of them. You will see patterns emergingng and I bet we can get most of them identified.

I was planning to do some video Saturday but none of my regular buddies showed so I got lazy and went back to the trailer. Us old dudes need our beauty rest.

I tried and tried to get a side-on photo, but these guys were SO small, and moving around SO much, that the camera simply couldn't get focus lock on them.

Hey Lynne,
Did those guys rest on the rock or were they free-swimming?
The shape from above almost looks like a really pale Longfin Sculpin. Without a side shot it's hard to tell the proportions though.
- Janna

They were free swimming, and definitely in groups of a dozen or more. Shaped more like a long-finned sculpin than a rockfish, though.

Since you say they're free-swimming, that sounds a lot more like a YOY Rockfish than a sculpin.
YOY Blacks and Yellowtails (and probably Blue-Sided too) are pretty long and slender, so that's a possibility.
So that might be what you saw, because they do love to hang out under rocks and such. They also have a pretty prominent black dorsal spot though, so next time you see them look for that.
- Janna

Those MUCH better photos certainly look like what I saw -- groups of very small fish in the niches in the rocks. But the individual I captured clearly doesn't have a black dorsal spot. In the words from one of my favorite movies, "Tis a mystery!"