Guys,
Whilst I have been an active supporter and participant in tagging in Aust for years and in my association with ANSA we have worked with NSW Fisheries and NSW GFAA for many years on the Game Fish Tagging Program and via AUSTAG, our own tagging program that ANSA maintains that has tagged 600,000 plus fish, we still maintain that catch and effort rates are a good indicator of how healthy the fishery is. Tagging GTs will tell us survival rates, in a round about sort of way distance travelled, however this is not an exact science either, but in such a small fishery like Noumea this may be a good thing to see the residential nature of fish. What I pushed these guys to do is ask their Fisheries to get their hands on a few satellite tags and then a clearer picture will develop. Do these bigger fish move offshore certain times of the year, hunt in the lagoons other times, etc.
Sat tags are great for this, but cost $10K each, as apposed to $1 for a spaghetti tag. One Sat tag will track a GTs movement for a few weeks, locations, depths etc, this will give you more info than 1000 normal tags, that only tell us days at liberty and distance travelled between hookups, not what happened in between. Not withstanding some of the spaghetti tag failings, since we weighed and measured every fish, this will provide some good insight into growth rates.
One thing I did this time is log my own catch and effort times.
I found I landed a GT every 2 hours on average
Interacted with a GT every 55 minutes or so, that is a follow or missed strike.
This is the area I need to work on, converting lookers to hookers!
Have a think about it.
Cheers
