Saving Seafood

Hawai‘i Fishermen Reel in Data With Local Tagging Project

June 2, 2025 — In Hawai‘i, fishing isn’t the only thing passed down through generations. Kaua‘i fisherman Cory Olores grew up watching his father carefully tag and release his catch. Today, he’s continuing that legacy through the Pacific Islands Fisheries Group’s Tag It project. The program has harnessed the capacity of anglers across Hawai‘i and led to more than 20,000 tagged fish. The tagged fish provide critical data for scientists to understand and ensure abundant fish populations.

For Fish, Fishermen, and the Future

NOAA Fisheries works to expand access to U.S. recreational fishing through science-based conservation and management. And no one wants to preserve their way of living and pastime more than fishermen.

The Tag It program empowers local anglers to be part of improving their fisheries. “Everyone’s so passionate about our resource, about access to it, and about perpetuating that for future generations,” said Alex Min, Tag It project coordinator, “That’s why we’re involved with tagging.”

Tags Tell a Story

Scientists use data to understand how fish populations are doing. That’s where partnerships between fishermen and scientists are vital. Tag It participants collect and share key data from tagged fish like length, date and time of catch, and location. (Don’t worry—the program uses general location to compare capture locations, so it doesn’t reveal secret fishing spots.)

“Whatever type of information I can give them, I’ll give them,” Olores said of the ulua he tags and releases. “I’m trying to save the fish—to get information to preserve the fish for future generations.” Olores first witnessed his father tag fish as a kid on Kauaʻi and has always been curious about how he can help maintain fishing opportunities in Hawai‘i.

Each time someone tags a fish, it adds a detail to the storyline. This helps scientists piece together how fish live, move, and change over time. The more data we have, the clearer the story becomes. And this helps anglers, too.

“It’s actually making me open my eyes more to figuring out the way they live,” Olores said. “I’ll take a picture; I’ll jot down what time I caught it; and I look at the tide … [and see] they actually bite better at this tide. I’m actually recording my catches and seeing what’s working better.”

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

Cape Cod: Playing tag with sharks

November 1, 2015 — CHATHAM, Mass. — The summer crowds and traffic on Main Street were down to a trickle. Leaves sifted onto lawns, and the birdsongs and rattle and hum of insect life were stilled for another year.

As the Aleutian Dream nudged past rolling breakers at the mouth of Chatham Harbor, the ocean told another story. Rippling V’s of migrating waterfowl filled the skies. All around the vessel, spouts from fin whales on their way to the West Indies, pausing to gorge themselves on sand eels, burst into the air like escaping jets of steam. The inky black backs of minke whales, likewise headed for equatorial regions, jackknifed as they dived on the eels below.

Notably absent were the great white sharks that seemed omnipresent at summer’s end, closing town beaches from Orleans up to Wellfleet as they cruised close to shore, occasionally beaching themselves in their pursuit of seals in Harwich, Chatham and Wellfleet.

But tagging data going back to 2010 showed that most great whites were gone from the Cape by mid- to late October.

“It’s only the big slobs hanging out now,” joked state Division of Marine Fisheries shark scientist Greg Skomal. In the summer, average sizes hovered around the 12- to 13-foot mark, but most of the sharks they had encountered this fall were to 14 to 15 feet long.

Perched on a pulpit, a narrow catwalk jutting forward from the bow of the Aleutian Dream, Skomal eased his back onto the hard aluminum rail and stretched his legs, waiting for word from above. Despite the bright sunshine and blue skies, wispy high cirrus clouds foretold of the coming storm that likely would end what had been a record-breaking shark-tagging season.

Read the full story at Cape Cod Times

UMass Dartmouth researchers developing open-source system for assessing fish movement

October 7, 2015 — UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science & Technology (SMAST) Associate Professor Geoffrey Cowles is leading a collaborative research effort to develop geolocation methodologies to improve understanding of fish movement patterns of Atlantic cod, yellowtail flounder, and monkfish. The project will focus on the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank and includes researchers from SMAST, Northeastern University, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, along with the fishing industry.

Geolocation, which is the process of taking data recovered from a fish archival tag and coming up with the best estimate of positions between release and recapture, can provide insights into catchability and fishery interactions. Using this technique, the research team will be able to guide behavior-dependent aspects of the model parameterization, as well as interpret the geolocated tracks. Researchers will also employ their collective skills in computer programming, oceanographic modeling, statistical analysis, and fisheries biology to assist in furthering the development of technology to geolocate fish.

This study will also use data acquired from previous studies on each of the example species, which all have their own characteristic behaviors and were tagged in different areas of the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank region. Most studies of fish movements have relied on fishery recaptures of conventional tags, which provide only the locations of release and recapture. Such tagging studies may bias perceptions of movement patterns.

Archival tags, which are attached to fish internally or externally to record temperature and pressure at regular intervals, enable estimations of fish location while at large. This type of information is often not fully utilized due to the technical difficulties of producing such movement histories via geolocation techniques.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard- Times