FIRST RECORD OF AN AURORA ROCKFISH, SEBASTES AURORA, FROMALASKAN WATERS

摘要

An Aurora Rockfish, Sebastes aurora, was collected in the Gulf of Alaska in 2009 during the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) groundfish assessment survey conducted by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center's (AFSC) Resource Assessment and Conservation Engineering (RACE) Division. Listed by Quast and Hall (1972) as a possible Alaskan species, S. aurora was not included in Mecklenburg and others (2002), indicating that it had not been reported north of Vancouver Island. The most northerly previous record was from off Langara Island, Canada (Gillespie 1991; Fig. 1). The species' range has been extended northward over the last 50 y from the Oregon coast southwest of the Columbia River mouth (Heyamoto and Hitz 1962), to off Amphitrite Point, Vancouver Island, Canada (Westrheim 1968), to our most recent record. The northern extent of S. aurora recorded from NMFS West Coast bottom trawl surveys between 1972 and 2001 (ca. 51°30'N) includes the localities of collections by Heyamoto and Hitz (1962) and Westrheim (1968).