Principal Investigator(s): (Include name, affiliation and email address):

Summary of Proposed Work: Effective management and conservation require knowledge of species ’ population structures. Many species have numerous, relatively independent productivity units (populations), which may be separated by geographic, oceanographic, or life history characteristics. A species ’ total production is the sum of production of all units. Declines in production of one or several units cannot be compensated by others. An assumption made for many marine species with pelagic larvae and mobile adults is that their populations extend broadly, possibly over much of their natural range. Recent studies of Pacific ocean perch (POP) demonstrated significant genetic divergence among collections sampled at about 400 km intervals along the GOA and BSAI continental slopes that is consistent with isolation-by-distance (Palof 2008). Analyses of juvenile POP (NPRB R0512) indicated that the divergence is not a consequence of different age compositions of collections (which could result from family survival disparities). Rockfishes generally and POP specifically are important commercially and ecologically, and knowledge of spatial population structure is critical for conservation and management. Consequently, we will analyze the genetic structure (microsatellites) of POP at a finer scale (to ~25 km) than previously. We will focus on structure that exists along the continental shelf near Kodiak, Yakutat, and Southeast Alaska (samples in hand). We hope to acquire samples from between Yakutat and Kodiak in 2009. From this knowledge we will use landscape genetics techniques to interpret the structure with reference to other available biological and physical data. This is an extension of ou