Abstract
This report provides summaries and characterizations of information developed during Phase 1 of the EFH 5-year review (2012). It is not intended as a full EFH analysis, but rather, to provide supporting and contextual information for those making proposals or evaluating proposals in Phase 2. There are a variety of aspects that are not addressed in this work, including the importance of juvenile habitat and the association of groundfishes with biogenic habitat. Thus, information previously developed to support the 2005 EFH EIS is still relevant.
In this document, we provide an analysis of habitat associations for six representative species, using the NWFSC trawl survey data as a primary input, coupled with a range of environmental parameters. It also incorporates some information from visual surveys in rocky areas. Because it uses these recent data, this analysis reflects current distributions of these species and characteristics of the habitats they currently occupy, and projects those associations in areas that have not been sampled. It is an empirically based assessment of the likelihood of finding a species at a particular location under current conditions.
For the 2005 EFH EIS, an analysis termed the Habitat Suitability Probability (HSP) that also produced distributional maps was conducted. That analysis was based on habitat mapping, the Habitat Use Database (a multidimensional relational database of species and life stages related to substrate types), the literature, and was moderated by expert opinion. It presents a depiction of potential or idealized distribution, independent of current conditions – it estimates the intrinsic potential for a particular habitat to support each species. When using these analyses to support or evaluate proposals, stakeholders, managers and scientists should keep the different approaches in mind.