Characterization of Active Spawning Season and Depth for Eastern Pacific Halibut ( Hippoglossus stenolepis), and Evidence of Probable Skipped Spawning

Abstract

The eastern Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis ) fishery is prosecuted over a nine-month season with a provision to cease harvests if stock declines to historically-observed minimum spawning biomass. The industry has requested to extend fishing into winter, but little information exists regarding potential impacts on spawning aggregations or effective spawning biomass. A strictly annual spawning cycle is presumed, but some adults fail to undertake the offshore migration associated with continental slope spawning. We examined depth records of halibut tagged with Pop-up Archival Transmitting (PAT) tags for evidence of offshore seasonal migration (n = 72). For tags that were physically recovered (n = 16) we identified the occurrence of abrupt (~100 m) mid-winter ascents, believed to be egg release. The active spawning season, defined by occurrence of these rises, lasted from 27 December–8 March, at bottom depths of 278–594 m. Eighteen percent of tagged halibut remained onshore. Thirty-one percent of fish with detailed archival records did not exhibit spawning rises, including all fish that remained onshore. Correcting for the possibility that some were likely immature, the data suggest that ~10% of the mature fish do not participate in the spawning migration and 10–15% that migrate to deep water may not actively spawn. The data suggest that opening the commercial fishery in early spring would likely subject actively spawning fish to fishing mortality, and could truncate the effective spawning period. Natural rates of skip-spawning and fisheries-induced reduction of the spawning period relative to suitable larval rearing conditions could introduce temporal and regional variance into levels of effective spawning biomass and warrant further investigation.