Inshore rockfish (quillback, yelloweye, copper, tiger, china and black) have been fished as a reliable food source for centuries by First Nations and other residences of coastal BC. In the 1970s The beginning of the lucrative live and fresh fish market and change in fishers’ attitudes towards groundfish in the 1970s intensified fishing of inshore rockfish. As fishing increased, inshore rockfish populations plummeted.
Declining Yelloweye Rockfish population inside Vancouver Island, British Columbia between 1920 and 2010 from DFO (2012). The two main periods of decline are one during the Second World War and a more substantial decline between the mid 1980s and mid 1990s.