Rockfish Conservation Area - R7 - CDFW [ds3144]

Rockfish Conservation Areas (RCAs) are closed areas for west coast groundfish fisheries and for some fisheries that may incidentally take groundfish as bycatch. The RCA boundary line is a connection of a series of GPS coordinates published in federal regulations (See 50 CFR 660.71-660.74) that are intended to approximate underwater depth contours. RCA boundaries are used in groundfish regulations to avoid interactions with certain groundfish species of concern and may change between seasons and Recreational Fishing Management Areas. The process of digitizing these boundary lines is as follows: 30, 40, 50, 100, and 150fm waypoint .csv files were downloaded from NOAA’s West Coast Groundfish Closed Areas website https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/sustainable-fisheries/west-coast-groundfish-closed-areas and imported into ArcGIS Pro. Each point feature was clipped to ocean waters offshore of California and merged together. “Fathom” was added as a field to each shapefile and populated with the corresponding depth in fathoms. Boundary lines for each shapefile (30, 40, 50, 100, and 150 fm) were created using the “Points to line” tool. Line Field: “area_name”. Attribute Source: Start Point. Transfer Fields: FID, area_name, Fathom. Attributes: area_name: Unique name field displaying depth and location. Fathom: Approximate depth in fathoms of contour line. Region: Describes which of the five groundfish management zones the section of the contour line is in.