Yelloweye rockfish are prized for their meat, and were declared overfished in 2002, at which time a survey determined that their population, which had been in decline since the 1980s, was just 7–13% of numbers before commercial fishing of the species began.

The yelloweye rockfish was first formally described in 1854 as Sebastes ruber by the American physician and ichthyologist William Orville Ayres with the type locality given as San Francisco, California.

[2] Larval yelloweye feed on diatoms, dinoflagellates, crustaceans, tintinnids, and cladocerans, and juveniles consume copepods and euphausiids of all life stages.

[7] The yelloweye rockfish has been recorded all along the East Pacific, from Umnak Island and Prince William Sound, Alaska, to Ensenada, Baja California.

[8] They are typically found in deeper, rocky-bottomed areas; in fact, they often spend their entire lifetime on a single rock pile.

[9] Due to their large size and fillet quality, yelloweye rockfish are a highly prized species in both commercial and recreational fisheries.

[10] Recent federal research by John Hyde at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) Southwest Fisheries Science Center in San Diego indicates that, after a yelloweye is brought to the surface, devices which bring these fish back to 45 meters below the sea surface may allow the fish to recompress and survive, analogous to "an ambulance ride home after an angler catches it."

The federal Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) may begin considering proposals to compensate anglers for using these devices, as a means to restore fish stocks.

This limit is set so that fisheries can potentially catch yelloweye if they are caught accidentally, but prevents the targeted fishing of the species.

Commercial retention of the rockfish is prohibited except for a small 300 lb (136 kg) limit, to allow yelloweye caught dead to be retained.