Thirty-four different species of rockfish live in B.C. coastal waters. Inshore rockfish include quillback, copper, china, tiger, black, and yelloweye (sometimes called Red Snapper) rockfish. B.C. rockfish come in many different shapes, sizes and colours, but they have certain characteristics in common. They are long-lived, have low productivity, mature slowly, are mainly sedentary in nature and rarely survive after being caught. These characteristics make inshore rockfish particularly vulnerable to over harvest and local area depletion.

Yelloweye rockfish, for example, can reach 90 centimetres in length and live over 100 years. After these rockfish reach sexual maturity, at about 20 years of age, they produce larvae annually. The survival of the young rockfish is subject to ocean conditions and years of good survival occur every 15 to 20 years. These life history characteristics of inshore rockfish result in low stock productivity.

Because inshore rockfish rarely survive after being caught, catch and release is not an effective management tool in protecting inshore rockfish stocks. Rockfish possess closed swim bladders, which cause gases in their body cavity to expand when they are brought to the surface. The decompression effects, ruptured swim bladders, damaged sinuses and eyes, are irreversible and fatal and can occur when bringing fish to the surface, from depths as shallow as 10 metres (30 feet).

Conservation concerns are most apparent for the quillback and yelloweye rockfish species where there is specific evidence of unsustainable harvest levels (there is little information to directly assess harvest impacts on the other species). Quillback and yelloweye rockfish are frequently harvested as target species, but all inshore rockfish species intermingle and are impacted in the directed and by-catch fisheries. Since all inshore rockfish species are vulnerable to over harvest and they are caught together, conservation measures will encompass all these inshore rockfish species.

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