Black rockfish

The black rockfish was first formally described in 1856 by the French biologist Charles Frederic Girard with the type locality given as Cape Flattery, Washington, and Astoria, Oregon. Some authorities classify this species in the subgenus Sebastosomus. The specific name melanops is a compound of melanos meaning "black" and ops which means "appearance", presumed to be a reference to the blackish brown back with black spotted brownish flanks. ==Distribution==

The black rockfish is found in the northeastern Pacific Ocean from Amchitka Island in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska to Santa Monica Bay in California. There have been two records of this species from the Iwate Prefecture of northern Japan. == Habitat ==

This species is found in the waters of the continental shelf and is associated with reefs at depths down to but it is more typically found between ==Description==

The black rockfish attains a maximum total length of and has a maximum published weight of . The head is weakly spined with only the nasal spines always present while the preocular and postocular spines are normally absent and the supraocular, tympanic, coronal, parietal and nuchal spines are always absent. ==Biology==

Black rockfish are pelagic, that is, they occur on the continental shelf. Like other pelagic fish, they spend most of their time amid the water columns and are generally associated with rougher terra. This can make it somewhat inconvenient for commercial fisheries, which are often situated in nearshore, shallow water, and rocky areas (reefs). They make up an important component of nearshore fisheries in Southeastern Alaska. does not successfully distinguish male and female black rockfish. ==Fisheries==

catch, in Alaska The black rockfish is a prime target for anglers, and a reproductive rate unusually high for its slow-growing genus makes it more resistant to fishing than its cousins, such as the yelloweye rockfish, are. They are harvested in Oregon, California, Washington, British Columbia, Alaska, and the Pacific. They are a fairly common catch along the West Coast of North America, where populations are stable. Schools of adults often aggregate over rocky bottoms or at the sea surface, habits that make them susceptible to targeted fishing. ==References==