Section 6 ROCK SOLE

• Main Authors: Thomas Wilderbuer And, Thomas K. Wilderbuer, Gary E. Walters
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2000
• Subjects: Bering Sea; Gulf of Alaska; Kamchatka Peninsula; Pacific; Kamchatka; Alaska; Aleutian Islands
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.12.8018; http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/npfmc/safes/2000/6rocksole.bsa.pdf

INTRODUCTION The northern rock sole (Lepidopsetta polyxystra n. sp.) is distributed primarily on the eastern Bering Sea continental shelf and in lesser amounts in the Aleutian Islands region. Two species of rock sole are known to occur in the North Pacific ocean, a northern rock sole (L. polyxystra) and a southern rock sole (L. bilineata) (Orr and Matarese 2000). These species have an overlapping distribution in the Gulf of Alaska, but the northern species predominates the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands populations where they are managed as a single stock. Centers of abundance occur off the Kamchatka Peninsula (Shubnikov and Lisovenko 1964), British Columbia (Forrester and Thompson 1969), the central Gulf of Alaska, and in the southeastern Bering Sea (Alton and Sample 1975). Adults exhibit a benthic lifestyle and, in the eastern Bering Sea, occupy separate winter (spawning) and summertime feeding distributions on the continental shelf. Northern rock sole spawn during the winter-earl