Tracks and Tags

I have inserted the Google Earth image of some of our tracks and tags during the last expedition.   While we did troll the edge and caught some fish, the majority were found under roaming frigate birds.   Whenever we saw a frigate low on the water we found fish - both dolphin and yellowfin.  The wind was blowing from the South for the first part of the trip and the fish were packed in along the North edge of the bank.  After 3 days of solid 15-20 knot North winds, we found the fish had moved further South along the edge North of Highborne Cay. Our gut feel before we left the dock was all the dolphin would have been pushed South by the high North winds but in fact the fish stayed in the area plus we saw schools of flying fish indicating the dolphin's favorite food was still in the area.  

The point of this post is something I have learned watching the TOPP program in the Pacific (www.topp.org) that is simply put that pelagic fish, birds and marine mammals are congregate around food.  Forget the winds and weather... find the food and the fish will be close by.  And that is something to remember as we continue our pelagic research here at MVF.

Dolphin Tag Expediton

We are just back from our second dolphin tagging expedition in the Bahamas. While the weather was cold, windy and the fish scarce, we did manage to tag 40 fish and recapture one dolphin that was tagged 3 days earlier by us. We started out off Chub Cay and found zero fish... A year ago there were thousands of dolphin there but this year we could not find the fish. We moved about 100 miles to the Southeast to Highborne Cay after a week and found some fish but then another cold front blew in for 3 days and pushed them South.

Probably the most interesting part of the trip was the recapture of a 38" bull dolphin 15.5 miles from where we tagged him 3 days earlier. Fish this size are tagged in the water then released almost always with a circle hook still in the jaw of the fish. The recaptured fish had shed the circle hook and was in great shape. So this is another good indicator for using circle hooks. We were fishing the Eagle Claw circle hook and it seemed to work better than others we have used. We did not miss a lot of fish and we always had corner jaw hook sets even on the yellowfin tuna and billfish caught. It could be just that we are more experienced on feeding the fish and setting the hook. More on that in the future.

I am still upset from the sight of the conch cemetery on the Berry Island flats. I would like to think that we can extract wealth from the sea and do it sustainably. But seeing that pile of conch shells is like seeing an abandoned strip mine somewhere in the West... The idea is to leave no trace of our presence... And maybe the conch and the fish don't care but I do...

Wild Cemetaries

We are in the Bahamas on our second dolphin tagging expedition. Fishing is slow. Last year we were covered up in dolphin. This year - nada so far...

But our observations of nature, wildness and conservation efforts continue. We have been exploring the tidal flats in the Berry Islands and came across a cemetery out in the middle of a large flat. Conch shells empty... harvested by the local Bahamian fishermen, piled up as a reminded of the human effort to extract wealth from our planet. I am not complaining about the local people making a living from the sea nor am I saying that they should not dump empty conch shells out there. It is just a reminder than we kill and eat most of the inhabitants of this planet's oceans and just left the remains behind as a signpost or in this case a cemetery of human impact on the planet. I am deeply affected by this and know more change, more awareness, more effort is required to protect the planet by me.