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Baby black rockfish from Ucluelet on the west side of Vancouver Island were raised at the Vancouver Aquarium for a year before being released at Point Atkinson in 1997. (Meighan Makarchuk/Vancouver Aquarium)

A fish that had been all but wiped out east of Vancouver Island is breeding after being reintroduced into waters off West Vancouver’s Lighthouse Park.

Researchers found baby black rockfish in nursery grounds this summer near Juniper Point, just under the Atkinson Lighthouse, the Vancouver Aquarium reported this week.

“It’s a nice small area with kelp beds and eel grass beds,” said Jeff Marliave, vice-president of marine science for the aquarium.

He said that marks the return of an vital predator to the Strait of Georgia.

That’s significant because when some species are missing, that narrows the ecosystem, he added, and “it’s just not going to function the way it’s supposed to.”

Black rockfish were so plentiful in the early to mid-1900s that sport fishermen sometimes considered them a nuisance, Marliave said, but they were fished to local extinction by the 1990s.

At that time, there was one rockfish left that divers saw regularly at Point Atkinson.

“It had a hurt fin, so we called it Notch,” Marliave recalled. “And we’re pretty sure a poacher took it.”

In 1996, the aquarium staff chose to try reintroducing the fish to Point Atkinson, where they knew there was once a healthy population. They caught about 250 baby black rockfish, less than a year ancient, from the waters off Ucluelet on the west side of Vancouver Island, where the fish are still plentiful.

Raised in aquarium

The thumb-sized fish were raised in the aquarium for a year until they had tripled in length, and were much less vulnerable to being eaten by predators such as ling cod. Then they were released.

Point Atkinson was judged to be a excellent site because it had piles of rock boulders, where the fish like to hide, and varying depths, allowing the fish to go deeper as they mature.

The fish, which eat small crustaceans called krill, are typically able to breed once they are eight years ancient.

Research divers from the aquarium first spotted a young rockfish believed to be the offspring of the released fish, in 2006, when it was about two years ancient.

Since then, they’ve seen young fish, suggesting some young black rockfish have survived in four out of the past six years. But this year’s nursery find is the strongest evidence yet that the fish have established a breeding population.

“I’m much more confident that they’re our fish,” Marliave said.

He said he’s not sure how many of the original 250 have survived and stayed at Point Atkinson, but the fact they are breeding successfully means there are probably a few dozen.

Because the fish seemed to be doing well, some more fish were added in 2004 and 2005, when they started to outgrow and overcrowd a show at the Vancouver Aquarium and were slated to be euthanized.

They were saved when Marliave suggested releasing them at Atkinson Point with acoustic tags that would allow researchers to track whether they remained in the area. That study has shown the fish indeed stick around.