Over the last several years, the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, in collaboration with the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission and Oregon State University, has been sampling young-of-the-year groundfishes and other small demersal fishes along the Newport Hydrographic (NH) line. An important question concerning these surveys is whether the NH line is representative habitat for demersal fishes along the central Oregon coast. Answering this question would help determine whether adding additional sampling lines to the long-term sampling project would be needed. In this analysis, beam trawl tows were taken from 16 stations along three sampling lines off of the central Oregon coast in September of 2012. In addition, high-definition videos were taken from these tows. From the beam trawl sampling there were no significant differences found in fish assemblages, dissolved oxygen, or temperature based on line, but there was a significant difference in communities and temperature based on depth. No clear pattern was found among the soft-sediment habitat variation. By comparing fish community composition and habitat across these transects, we addressed the overall question of whether the NH line is representative of a larger section of the central Oregon coast.This project is part of ongoing research, which has been extended to include temporal variation. Dr. Lorenzo Ciannelli has also been brought onto this project as of Fall 2015
