Baby Giants are found at the heads of submarine canyons

One of the age‐old mysteries surrounding the Giant Sea Bass (Stereolepis gigas) has been “where are the baby giants?” For almost a century, we have known that their young‐of‐the‐year (=YOY or baby) do not look anything like the adults (Fig. 1). However, where the YOY recruits could be found remained largely unknown until now. That mystery has now been solved courtesy of our 3‐yr study on the distribution and ecology of their young‐of‐the‐year (YOY) off southern California. The main goal of that study was to determine the distribution and general ecology of the YOY of this rare, elusive, and endangered species through extensive SCUBA surveys (Benseman and Allen 2018). Photo credit: Mike Couffer This species is truly a giant among reef fishes reaching lengths of 2.3 m (7 ft.) and weights exceeding 260 kg (560 lbs.). Giants were over‐exploited by their fishery in the early 1900s, and depressed populations had prevented much research into their biology until recently (Hawk and Allen 2014, Chabot et al. 2015, House et al. 2016, Allen 2017). Although it remains red‐listed by the IUCN, the population of Giants now appears to be mounting a comeback due to a moratorium on catch in 1982 and more significantly the nearshore gill net ban in the coastal waters of southern California in 1994 (Pondella and Allen 2008). Off the coast of southern California in 2014–2015, the nursery areas of the baby Giants turn out to be the shallow, nearshore waters along open coast, sandy beaches near the heads of submarine canyons off Redondo Beach, Newport Beach, and La Jolla, California (Fig. 2). In fact, the vast majority of occurrences of these baby Giants (73%) were seen within 500 m of the heads of these same submarine canyons. Furthermore, these small fish were encountered mainly in the summer months at depths between 2 m and at least 38 m and were found to settle after almost a lunar month (27 d) from the plankton at around 10 mm (0.4 in.) in length. They remain there until they are about 80 mm (3.1 in.) in total length feeding largely on mysid shrimp within these newly identified nursery areas. A general, interesting ecological question now arises. “What is it about the heads of submarine canyons that insures their survival through the critical young stages of their long lives?” In general, submarine canyons are productive habitats due primarily to the entrainment of algal and other detritus from shallow coastal waters (Vetter and Dayton 1999, Fernandez‐Arcaya et al. 2017). Furthermore, alongshore currents promote the upwelling of deep, nutrient rich water into shallow