Catch and Release in Marine Recreational Fisheries

A Pneumatic Cradle for Handling and Tagging of Wahoo and other Large Pelagic Fishes

A. Nash, J. Whiting, and B. E. Luckhurst

doi: https://doi.org/10.47886/9781888569308.ch25

The Bermuda Division of Fisheries commenced a study in 1995 of the fishery biology of various pelagic species taken around the island by both commercial and recreational anglers. The most important of these pelagic species is the wahoo Acanthocybium solandri, which has had the highest landings of any species in the commercial fishery since the mid-1980s. These landings have shown a generally increasing trend over time and peaked in 1997 at 105 mt (Luckhurst and Trott 2000).

The research program on wahoo involves basic fishery biological sampling, including size (fork length), weight, sex, stage of gonadal development, and tissue sampling for genetics analysis. In addition, the sagittal otoliths (earbones) are extracted for use in an age and growth analysis. An initial examination of the sagittal otoliths has revealed a complex microstructure with few clear marks that can be used for aging purposes (Luckhurst et al. 1997).