In response to declining biomass of Northeast Pacific groundfish in the late 1990s and to improve the scientific basis for management of the fishery, the Northwest Fisheries
Science Center standardized and enhanced their annual bottom
trawl survey in 2003. The survey was expanded to include the entire area along the U.S. west coast at depths of 55–1280 m. Coast-wide biomass and species richness significantly decreased during the first eight years (2003–10) of this fishery-independent survey. We observed an overall tendency toward declining biomass for 62 dominant taxa combined (fishery target and nontarget species) and
four of seven subgroups (including cartilaginous fish, flatfishes, shelf rockfishes, and other shelf species),
despite increasing or variable biomass trends in individual species. These decreases occurred during a period of reduced catch for groundfish along the shelf and upper slope regions relative to historical rates. We used information from multiple stock assessments to aggregate species into three groups: 1) with strong recruitment, 2) without strong recruitment in 1999, and 3) with unknown recruitment level. For each group, we evaluated whether declining biomass was primarily related to depletion (using year as a proxy) or environmental factors (i.e., variation in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation). According to Akaike’s
information criterion, changes in aggregate biomass for species with strong recruitment were more closely related to year, whereas those with no strong recruitment were more closely related to climate. The significant decline in biomass for species without strong recruitment confirms that
factors other than depletion of the exceptional 1999 year class may be responsible for the observed decrease in biomass along the U.S. west coast
