High-tech tarpon tagging

Galveston Bay areas closed to oyster harvesting
December 12, 2014
Wide open fishing in the upper reaches of Trinity Bay
December 12, 2014

TARPON TAGGING

 

 

On Wednesday morning, a seemingly innocent object popped to the surface of the Bay of Campeche. The item was an electronic tracking device, described as about the size of a fat cigar with a golf ball stuck on its end. It started sending signals to a connected satellite and immediately began relaying information it had collected over the past two months.

It was originally attached to a 200 tarpon caught off Pass Cavallo on the middle Texas coast.

The device, a PAT tag, a pop-off archival transmitting tag, is part of the arsenal of tools being employed in a cooperative effort between scientists and avid tarpon anglers to fill the gaps in knowledge of the life history, movements, population dynamics and other important information of tarpon.

Tarpon 166 – the 200 pounder wearing the tag that popped off in the Bay of Campeche- was the heaviest tarpon on which researchers/anglers have placed a tag. The tarpon traveled farther south than any texas-tagged tarpon.

John Hark photo

 

Loading

Comments are closed.