0 blue marlin, 15 dolphin tagged day 1

We had our first full day of fishing today with the full fishing team aboard. Winds were blowing 15-20 kts from the NE and seas were 3-5 feet. We started out in the Pocket and worked our way South towards Morgans Bluff on Andros Island. A school of dolphin came through the spread just before lunch and we tagged 16 fish. Adding to the two fished tagged off Jupiter, FL earlier in January that gives us a total of 18 dolphin tagged in 2008.


We will be fishing the Chub Cay all release billfish tournament for the next three days. Winds are suppose to blow 20 kts plus tomorrow. Should be an interesting day. Stay tuned for more posts.

For those who do not know where we are, here is a map of the part of the Bahamas where we are working this week. Just google up Chub Cay.

2008 Tagging Expedition begins...

Greetings to everyone out there. We are on our way for a 3 week tagging expedition in the Bahamas. We are currently at Chub Cay in the Berry Islands. We will be here for two weeks with the first week centered on billfish tagging and tracking using the recently installed Maxsea software on the Makara. The software enables us to track up to 100 sportfishers during a tournament to record both fishing effort and catch data. The Makara is only the 3rd boat in the US to have the tracking software installed. We will publish some early results once we complete the first leg of the tournament. We are bringing an extra research vessel this trip - a new 33 Contender. Powered by triple Yamaha 250s, the boat has 60 mph speed and a range of 400 miles. The boat named the "Snafu" will be used primarily for dolphin tagging and access to remote bonefish flats.


Our second week of the trip will be for bonefish tagging. This is a new project that we did some preliminary work in 2007. We are planning to ramp it up in 2008 and do extensive tagging throughout the Bahamas. More on that on a later post.

Finally our last week of the trip is to tag dolphin. Fisheries biologist Don Hammond will be on board and is bringing some of the new half size pop-up satellite tags for deployment. You will remember we did tag a 58" dolphin during our trip to Isla Mujeres last June. Unfortunately the dolphin was eaten by a large predator (unknown to us) and only survived a few hours after the tagging occurred. We are excited to be working with Don in 2008.

We did fish today in the "Pocket" which is just North of Andros Island. Cold winds from the North shut down the bite. The rest of the crew arrived today so we have a full lineup on board now. We will need it for blue marlin fishing. We will be out early tomorrow morning so look for a report tomorrow evening. Best to all.

Resort Development

We just returned from 4 days of wahoo fishing in the Bahamas. Base camp was Old Bahama Bay on the west end of Grand Bahama Island. West End as it is referred to is about 60 miles from the Florida coast. The resort is has 73 rooms, a 72 slip marina and a couple restaurants along with a tiki bar overlooking the bonefish flats to the North. The fishing was good as we caught a dozen nice wahoo up to 40 lbs.

The disturbing part of the trip is the new resort being developed on the 6 mile stretch of the island. The scale of its environmental footprint on the local ecosystem is huge as you can see in the photo below. Construction is underway. 6 miles of the 10 miles of canal are already dug out of the center of the island to make a man-made tropical paradise. Ships to 200 feet in length will soon come and go. a 10,000 foot runway can acomodate all but the largest commercial jets. I am sure the development is good for the community and island - jobs, taxes, improvements in local infrastructure and schools will benefit from the influx of people and money. It is a choice the Bahamian government made... Atlantis redux.

The real question is what will be the impact on the marine ecosystem? What is the impact of two championship golf courses? slips for 500 fishing boats, dive boats, yachts? What is the developer doing to protect and preserve the ecosystem that they have just invaded? What will happen to the conch and bonefish flats to the North? the reefs to the South and West? What does it mean when a corporation decides to take a sparsely inhabited tropical ecosystem and pave it, dig it up and make a man-made tropical paradise? Pure wealth extraction from Nature. Our scientific and conservation work is just beginning in the Bahamas... documenting the fragile nature of the reefs, tidal flats and steep walls, publishing our results and driving awareness of all there to force the choice between man-made paradises and Nature's paradises. Life is short. Get involved.

Killer Whales in the Bahamas

Here at MVF we are constantly pushing the edge to learn more about the Bahamian ecosystem. A week ago we decided to explore the bonefish flats via small plane to better understand the habitat, fish movements and sandbars. We were keenly interested in the flats behind Joulters. With Kevin as pilot and Billy as top spotter, we flew in at around 1000 ft. Billy say something and we did a slow spiral to investigate. And guess what? A pod of Killer Whales swimming to the North just off Andros. I shot a couple photographs but upon hearing the plane they went down. Unfortunatley I had my wide angle lens on the camera to shoot the flats instead of my telephoto lens.

Upon returning to the Makara, I logged into the OBIS-Seamap site (www.seamap.env.duke.edu) and did a search on Killer Whale sightings in the Bahamas. I found out that there have been 5 sightings in the past 20 years reported by the Bahamas Marine Mammal Research Organization. I emailed them the sighting information plus pictures so they would not think I was crazy. I received a great email back from them saying thanks for the report and helping them expand their sightings database.

I am always amazed by what we find on each trip to the Bahamas. The rich diversity, the incredible people and the opportunity to explore and learn there is immense. And on every trip we contribute to the conservation of the islands in some way - a killer whale sighting, a chance meeting with an experienced guide, more data, more posts like this. Check it out.

Tagged Bonefish

We are launching a new bonefish study in 2008 in the Bahamas where we will be exploring several different island groups to characterize the bonefish populations. We expect to spend the next three years evaluating the number and size of bonefish observed, caught and tagged at different locations which we will reveal at the end of the study. There is significant fishing pressure on bonefish in the Bahamas as it is one of the few sources of real income for some of the remote islands in the country. Our existing base of knowledge spans from Grand Bahama Island down all the way to the Turks and Caicos. We hope we can use the Makara as a research base station, enlist additional anglers and develop a baseline study for bonefish populations in selected areas. We will be providing more information before we launch the project in January, 2008.

We set out on a hot July day to explore the tuna canyons south of Freeport, Bahamas and to also explore the Northern section of the Berry Islands around Great Harbour Cay. With a crew of Carson, Brandon, Billy, Steve and myself, we made the run to Lucaya in flat seas and fished the tuna canyon that afternoon with live bait (greenies and sardines caught off Juno Pier). We caught 5 nice yellowfins with the largest around 60 lbs. The next day we explored the flats on the North Side of Grand Bahama Island and finally ran into a large school of bonefish, numbering about 500 fish. They spooked after we hooked one and we looked for them for an hour in 90+ degree heat and a blazing sun. We bugged out back to the Makara looking for shade and headed out to spearfish 40 miles East of Lucaya that afternoon.

Billy and Carson speared some nice hogfish and a grouper. Unfortunately the blood trail attracted a 8 ft reef shark that, after circling them in the water, came at them. Billy poped the shark in the head with his pole spear and Capt Steve backed the Makara down. We got the divers out of the water safely and called it a day.

We ran down to the Northern Berry Islands to check out Ambergris Cay, which is a massive bonefish flat located 20 miles North of our favorite spot, Chub Cay. Unfortunately the water must have been in the mid 90s and we didn't see any bones. Caught some cudas in the slot and spent the night on the anchor in some beautiful grass flats. We caught some nice mutton snappers then headed back to Lucaya to end the trip.

The yellowfin tuna fishing has been awesome South of Lucaya this year. The upwelling in the Tuna Canyon just attracts large schools of bait. The fish are bigger and you can always find them after 5 or 6 pm when they start to feed on the surface. We did not see or hear about any dolphin being caught. The water at 88 degrees is just too hot for the green monsters.

We will probably wait until the weather cools off before our next trip. Will let you know when we head out again. I will post some pictures from our whale shark trip to Isla Holbox, Mexico soon.

We received a report from Don Hammond that a 25 inch dolphin we tagged (tag #X04107) on April 9, 2007 near Chub Cay, Bahamas was recaptured by a commercial fishermen off Brunswick, GA on May 30, 2007. We estimate the fish traveled 560 miles over a 51 day period. The report included that the fish was 33 inches in length when recaptured, equating to an 8 inch length increase over the 51 days. According to Don Hammond, dolphin are reported to grow 2 inches per week in tropical waters.

We have tagged over 300 dolphin so far in 2007. This is our second recapture with the first one being reported back on May 1, 2007 having traveled only 30 miles from the same tag site as X04107. We will be back on the water tagging during the last week of July. Before that we head back to the Yucatan to Isla Holbox to dive with whale sharks with Dr. Rachel Graham as part of a long term study that includes tracking these magnificent fish off Belize, Mexico and Madagascar. I will report back with pictures and hopefully video clips from this next expedition. In the meantime write me at tom@mvftag.com with questions or comments.