Fish assemblages in southern California using trawl data from the National Marine Fisheries Service

Fish benthic trawls were completed by the National Marine Fisheries Service Groundfish Survey Program (NMFS GSP). Data from 477 fishery independent trawls ranging from 55-1200 m in depth were collected June-November in 1977, 1989, 1992, 1995, and 1997- 2002. Fish that were not present in at least 5% of the trawls were removed from this analysis, resulting in a dataset containing information on 59 fish species. Site groups were calculated using the Bray-Curtis dissimilarity coefficient with average means clustering (Romesburg, 1991). Gear included a 7.6-m head-rope semi balloon otter trawl with 1.25 cm codend mesh trawled for 5-10 minutes at each station.