WDFW lengths are a mix of whole and carcass lengths

[melissamonk-NOAA]

From Kristen Hinton (WDFW)

• From memory, for the Rockfish we checked pre and post fillet, the shrinkage was pretty nominal. Some fish shrunk 2cm, but most were less than 1cm. There didn't seem to be a reason why some shrunk more than others.

• A lot of WDFW sport samples are carcass samples. I won't say exclusively, but darn near it. They are not labeled as such, there is no where to do that currently that I know of.

• WDFW does denote fillet vs whole (dress type field in their bio data)

• I (KH) could say with pretty good certainty that fish coming from Westport are carcasses. Most from La Push and Neah Bay are also, but there could be some whole fish mixed in. Fish sampled by Ocean Sampling Program (OSP) are probably a mixed bag of carcasses and whole fish, however they are landed and presented to the samplers is how they are taken.

• Westport everything comes in carcasses from the charter boats because they fillet on the way back to the dock. Up north, we intercept wherever we can in the process, but most times it's after fish have been filleted.

• Dress Type has been recorded since 2018 for our group. It is not something that is recorded by OSP, but I could try and prod that out of them for the future