Date: January 28, 2003
TAG 2003 once again was a great success. The TAG team placed a total of 122 electronic tags and 5 conventional tags on Atlantic bluefin tuna caught by the Morehead City and Hatteras fishing fleet. All of the fishing this season took place off Cape Lookout. The mean size of an electronic tagged fish was 200 cm (78.7 inches), and 137 kg (or 301 lbs). The total electronic tags deployed in the North Atlantic by the Tag team now stands at 680. What makes this effort more remarkable in January 2003 is that despite the very challenging weather conditions we faced we accomplished our goals in 11 actual fishing days. Thus, the efficiency of tagging for this total fishing effort was perhaps the highest ever achieved in the history of the Tag program. For those of you who were present you know that eight out of the eleven were not exactly the most pleasant conditions to fish in.
We owe our success to the teamwork that North Carolina fishermen have demonstrated this season and for the past six years. First, we say thanks to our two transfer teams and captains- John Jenkins and Dale Britt. The Calcutta, captained by John Jenkins, with wiremen Charles Perry and Allen Willis were as smooth as ever. Enjoying the first transfer season with TAG was the Forty-Something, owned and operated by Captain Dale Britt. Dale’s personable nature on the water made for a really great addition to the TAG team in 2003. Daryl Brower’s third season with TAG, assisted by Rik Treamer made the transfers go fast and easy on this boat. We cannot say enough about the patience of John and Dale, and the talent of Charles and Daryl. They make what we do look like a walk in the park. Safety, patience, persistence and skill are words I use to describe the team effort exemplified by the transfer boats.
This is by far the most efficient TAG effort ever accomplished. The Transfer Technique is the main reason TAG is a success. Invented in 1997 by Captain Peter Wright and Bob Eakes aboard the F/V Raptor & Bullfrog in Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, the use of the tennis ball for transferring the leader attached to a bluefin between boats has enabled Carolina fishers from all types of vessels to participate in TAG. This year over 35 different boats provided fish to the TAG teams. Transfer Awards recognizing the contributions of our most successful transfer boats are the TAG teams way of saying thank you. All are accompanied by TAG team jackets and gift certificates to local tackle stores. This year’s TAG results for transfers are as follows: First Place in the Transfer category went to Ashley Renaie that contributed 26 bluefin tuna to the tagging totals. Tommy Fletcher captains the vessel with mate Chris Johnson. We thank Tommy for his continued efforts and his vessel has won a $1500 tackle gift certificate. Second place went to the Wave Runner with 23 bluefin tuna transfers, captained by Bruce Pollack and mate Chris who won a $1000 tackle gift certificate. Third place was the Run-off captained by Bill Van Skyver with Marty Hyatt wiring the fish, who received a $750 gift certificate. The Hatteras boat transferring the most fish at TAG 2003 was Hunter Captained by Walt Spruill who will receive a $500 gift certificate.
Of the total tags placed: 106 tags were implantable archival tags from Lotek (model 2310). 16 Pop-up satellite archival tags from Wildlife computers were also placed on bluefin tuna. 4 bluefin tuna were deemed to be too small or had a significant injury and were conventional tags. The pop-up satellite tag runs a sophisticated software that recognizes if mortality occurs. Thus far there have been zero tags indicating that a mortality from the pop-up satellite tags occurred. This indicates that 100% of the fish have survived from J-hook capture and release process. The tags are scheduled to pop-up one year from deployment. You can contact Sue Vermillion our TAG team coordinator at hdc@aloha.net if we placed a pop-up on your fish to learn more information about the tag and the date of pop-up in the future.
I would like to thank Duke University Marine Lab for hosting TAG 2003, and the entire TAG team which includes: Sue Vermillion, Chuck Farwell, Tom Williams, Steve Teo, Kevin Weng, George Shillinger, Peter B. Wright, Richard Novak, Nate Tulloch, Joe Bonaventura, Kathy O’Brien and Gaelin Rosenwaks. The rookie of the Year award goes to “young” Nate Tulloch an undergraduate from Stanford University.
Thanks Again for Facilitating Marine Science on the Crystal Coast!
Barb Block
Date: January 5, 2003
The TAG team is in North Carolina from January 06, 2003 through January 28th, 2003.
TAG scientists are deploying two state-of-the-art tags. The LTD 2310 archival tag built by Lotek, Inc. of Canada and the pop-up satellite, PAT 2.5 tag, built by Wildlife Computers of Redmond, Washington. The TAG team has the potential to deploy as many as 145 tags in 2003! Not since 1997 have we set the bar for deployments this high! We hope by the end of January to place the 700th tag in an Atlantic Bluefin tuna. As always we will need the help of North Carolina Fishers!
This year, the TAG team has assembled a large group of scientists and fishers who can ensure the success of the up coming program. On the water, look for the surgery team aboard the F/V Calcutta and F/V Forty Something. The Calcutta is owned and operated by Captain John Jenkins. John has been working with the program since 1999, and we owe much of our success to his dedication to our program. Captain Charles Perry (CP) will be on deck of the Calcutta- wiring the bluefin and working the transfers. CP is without question a magic key to the success of the TAG team effort. On board will be a surgery team consisting of Dr. Barbara Block, Charles Farwell and Nate Tulloch, an undergraduate from Stanford University experiencing TAG for the first time! Dr.Tom Williams our Veterinarian at the TRCC will lead the second surgery team. Dr. Tom will be on board the Forty-Something owned and operated by Captain Dale Britt. Dale has been instrumental in previous TAG programs transferring numerous bluefin tuna for electronic tagging. Assisting Dr. Tom will be two of the most experienced PhD students on our team, Steve Teo and Kevin Weng. Captain Daryl Brower a long time participant in the TAG program will be working with Dale in the cockpit using his years of experience wiring bluefin to help bring the fish aboard. Daryl traveled with the TAG team to the Gulf of Mexico this season where he had the opportunity to wire large breeding giants up to 850 lbs. in size. Peter Wright will be helping out aboard a new Pursuit boat being tested in Carolina. We have a wonderful crew supporting the TAG team led by Sue Vermillion. Come by Duke Marine Lab and meet the TAG team at the Boathouse anytime in January (particularly on windy days).
We urge all of you to help TAG meet our ambitious goal. If you see or hear the TAG team is on the water- this season- we are tagging all size classes of bluefin tuna. All you have to do is call the tag team just after the hook up- and one of the vessels will be happy to receive a transfer of the bluefin. Contact us below if you are interested in donating a tag and fishing aboard one of the surgery boats. By releasing a fish today with an electronic tag, you are ensuring that there will be a bluefin tuna fishery tomorrow!
What TAG is all about is science! TAG is here because Carolina has a large aggregation of bluefin tunas. Tagging here is more efficient here than anywhere else on Earth! Working together we have proven that you can garner a lot of knowledge by putting in electronic tags in Carolina bluefin tuna. The TAG Scientific team has just completed another remarkable year in 2002. We continued our efforts to tag Atlantic bluefin tuna across their range. TAG teams of scientists and fishers operated in Carolina, the Gulf of Mexico and New England waters on a variety of recreational and commercial fishing vessels. This past year we placed 30 implantable archival tags of the latest generation (capable of recording up to 5 years of data) and 70 pop-up satellite archival tags into bluefin tuna throughout their range. To date, 550 electronic tags have been placed in bluefin tuna in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and Mediterranean Seas. The TAG program has emerged as one of the largest archival tagging effort on any species of animal in the world. The results of the research are summarized in the enclosed report that we presented to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).
Figure 1. Bluefin tuna 779 (218 cm) released on 20 January 1999 off Morehead City, NC from the F/V Calcutta with a transfer from the National Geographic Charter on F/V Beach Music and recaptured in Spain (237.4 cm) from a pen on December 28, 2001. This fish moved to area east of the Flemish Cap in the summer of 1999 and 2000.
This year, commercial fishers from 7 nations continued the cooperative effort to return archival tags to ICCAT and NMFS. We received our 65th archival tag recovered from the bluefin tagged along the North Carolina coast in 1997 and 1999. To date, 24% of the bluefin tuna released with implantable archival tags have been recaptured. Remarkably, as in years past, stories that had not been revealed previously have shown up in the data from recovered tags. One fish (779) shown in Figure 1, moved from Carolina in 1999 to the Flemish Cap, a site where many mature bluefin go to feed. This fish moved to the eastern Atlantic in January of 2000, up to the Strait of Gibraltar in the spring and back to the Flemish Cap in early 2001. The fish stayed on the feeding grounds all summer and fall and then came back to the Bahamas where it may have spawned. The fish then swam quickly across the North Atlantic, and through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean and was caught by a French purse seiner in June, 2001 who then sold the fish to a Spanish grow out pen. It remained in the pen for 6 months and the tag was recovered in December of 2001. More recently, a bluefin tuna, (NMT 705), left Carolina in January 1999 after being tagged aboard the Calcutta, while other fish tagged in 1999 moved to the Gulf of Mexico during the breeding period, bluefin 705 moved across the ocean in 2000 to the Mediterranean Sea and appeared to spawn to the south of Spain and west of Corsica. Remarkably, we recorded 4 consecutive cycles of this bluefin tuna moving in and out of the Strait of Gibraltar and onto what appears to be the breeding region in the Mediterranean Sea. It is the first archival recovery with a full record of breeding in the Mediterranean over several years. Previously we had recorded bluefin tuna going to this region, with 10 recaptures from the eastern Mediterranean, but not a repetitive movement in and out of the Mediterranean. Taken together with the previous results, this fish indicates that while some fish go to the Gulf of Mexico and Bahamas to breed in June and early July, others that feed in Carolina go to the Mediterranean Sea. Thus, while mixing on feeding grounds (Carolina) the bluefin tuna appear to return to spawning grounds, perhaps where they were natally spawned.
Our Stanford Ph.D student, Steve Teo and the Tag Team are publishing papers this year that reveal information from our work in the Gulf of Mexico spawning ground. Working with Captain Robert Jansensius of the F/V Shearwater we are establishing the spawning regions and the environmental conditions necessary for bluefin spawning in the Gulf of Mexico. The pop-up satellite archival tagging continued to reveal that if you follow a bluefin tagged in the west for less than a year- you'll most likely find the fish in the West Atlantic (Figure 2). Over 60 tags were deployed in Carolina waters in 2002 and the figure shows that most fish popped-up along the North American shelf or in offshore West Atlantic waters. Several of my PhD students (Andre Boustany and Mike Stokesbury) are publishing papers on the pop-up satellite tagging data. Mike's paper focuses on New England fish and reveals that bluefin tuna tagged in New England move south to Carolina and in some cases in to the Gulf of Mexico. In New England TAG was assisted by the efforts of Mr. Wayne Whippen owner of the Tightline and Captain Gary Stuve aboard the Leslie Anne, owned by Richard Whorley.
A new paper by Andre Boustany being published in 2003 will demonstrate the results from over 165 pop up satellite tags placed in Carolina waters from 1997-2002. Andre has a map with thousands of light based geolocation points and hundreds of radio-endpoints providing a corroborative data set against the archival tags. The major story is linkage of the western North Atlantic fisheries, the Carolina fishery to New England waters, and the close association of the tunas to the US continental shelf and major oceanographic features such as the Gulf Stream waters. Additional ties of Carolina bluefin to spawning regions to the south in the Bahamas have emerged from this data set. Importantly, the tagging efforts are continuing to reveal new insights and information about the biology and behavior of bluefin tuna. The data on the biology and movements of Atlantic bluefin obtained from electronic tagging data are a major basis for proposing changes in the ICCAT management of bluefin tuna. In particular, the data from archival tags is useful as it spans multiple years.
Figure 2. Endpoint positions from 2002 TAG-A-Giant pop-up satellite tagging. Bluefin released from waters offshore of Morehead City, North Carolina, popped up along the US continental shelf and offshore Gulf Stream waters.
To put together a 2004 program, many of you have already helped us by donating directly to the Tuna Research and Conservation Center. Please consider sponsoring a TAG in 2004. If you do, contact bblock@stanford.edu in Carolina- and we are offering an opportunity for all TAG sponsors ($1000) to be fishers aboard the TAG surgery vessels the F/V Calcutta and F/V Forty Something.
TAG 2003 is supported by a Grant from the National Marine Fisheries Service, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and support in 2003 from the following Foundations Packard, MacArthur, Disney, Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the Marine Ventures Foundation.
