PARENT SESSION
Poster Session 27: Fish Ecology
Thursday, August 11, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM, Exhibit Hall 220 A-E, Level 2, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Can we hasten recovery if we bring back the old Moms? Maternal effects and population dynamics of a fished species, Black rockfish (Sebastes melanops).

Lucero, Yasmin¹, ¹ Center for Stock Assessment Research, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

ABSTRACT- Black rockfish have been fished on the west coast since at least the 1860's. One of the impacts of fishing is a truncated age-distribution, i.e. no older fish. Recent research published in Ecology (Berkeley et al. 2004) demonstrate the presence of a maternal effect in this species. Berkeley et al. found that larval survival in the lab could increase as much as four-fold with increasing age of the mother, independent of maternal size. There are reasons to suppose this work is generalizable to several rockfish species. This has raised concerns about the loss of older fish under harvesting, and led to calls for Marine Protected Areas designed to protect older rockfish. We use a simulation to explore the potential impact of maternal effects on the population size and recovery rate of Black rockfish. We find that (1) the rate of onset of the effect has no influence on its ultimate population impact, this permits prediction without improved knowledge of the underlying mechanism. And (2) realistic values of the strength of the maternal effect can overcome early life history density dependent mortality and manifest as a higher population growth rate and steady state population size.

Key words: maternal effects, simulation, marine protected area, juvenile mortality