Five species of ocean perches (family Sebastidae) are found offshore along the NSW coast but two species comprise the bulk of the landings. The reef ocean perch (Helicolenus percoides) is distributed across the continental shelf and onto the upper slope in depths between about 80 and 350 m while the bigeye ocean perch (H. barathri) is an upper-slope species found in 250-800 m. Ocean perch inhabit reef and areas of flat, hard seabed (Bruce et al. 2002).

NSW landings are comparatively small, ranging between 15 and 30 t per annum since 2000. Most of the landings are reported by Ocean Trap and Line and Ocean Trawl Fisheries, and comprise mainly bigeye ocean perch (Bruce et al. 2002).

There have been no genetic studies of stock structure (Ward and Elliott 2001).