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.

Circle hooks versus J hooks

I know the issue of J versus circle hooks has been settled with numerous studies showing the high mortality. MVF funded a study back in 2003 with John Graves from VIMS showing that one third of all white marlin caught with J hooks died within 1 week. He employed pop-up psat tags to obtain this data. NMFS came out with a ruling earlier this year to ban J hooks from any billfish tournament on the East Coast. Unfortunately the reaction from the multi-million dollar tournaments forced NMFS to postpone the new rule until 2008. It is hard to change your fishing techniques after years of success. Circle hooks force captains and mates to learn to rig differently: no more flashy skirts, islanders or seawitches... makes rigging baits boring, to say the least.

I must be honest and say we use both circle and J hooks on the Makara and have resisted eliminating J hooks from use especially in the dolphin tagging study. The pictures posted in an earlier blog of the dead sailfish, and Billy digging the J hook out of his gut moved me. I hate change just like everybody else, but either we quit fishing or we change our ways. We cannot kid ourselves that our boat's fishing tactics do not make a difference. They do. We need to change how we fish to protect the fish.

The waters off Cancun and Isla Mujeres are full of fish. There is less fishing pressure now: no live bait allowed except by local captains and the use of circle hooks have ensured the highest survival rate of migratory billfish, and dolphin continue strong into the Gulf and up the East Coast. East Coast and Gulf fishermen need to wake up and do the right thing for the fish and themselves. Circle hooks.

Expedition completed, Makara back home

The crew brought the Makara back to its home port in North Palm Beach this week. The team fished 11 days off Isla Mujeres, had 237 fish events- tagged, released, missed or boxed. We tagged 134 dolphin plus one wahoo. We also caught a number of billfish. We went 7 for 10 on white marlin and 12 for 26 on sailfish. On a different measure, we traveled an average of 70 miles per day to fish. The fishing grounds were about 15 miles offshore so we averaged around 40 miles of trolling per day.

Our best tagging day was June 2, 2007 when we tagged 36 dophin. Our worse day was June 11, 2007 where we did not catch a single one. We knew there was a Spring migration off Isla. Our goal was to tag enough fish to find out where they go once they leave. We suspect they follow the current and head North in the Gulf or around Cuba up the Florida Straits. For now we are beginning our planning for the next tagging expedition and wait to see if any of our tagged fish are recaptured.

I want to say thanks to Captain Steve Unsell and Mate Billy Gerlach for great work during the trip. The got the Makara ready to go and kept it running smoothly the whole trip. Billy worked every night preparing 6-8 dozen baits for the next day. I also want to thank the Shelby Jihad - Jim, Carter, Mateo - for coming down and helping out in the cockpit. I'll have more to say about the rest of the crew in another blog...