FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 71, NO. 3 



density of 50 tags per million individual fish 

 (Table 9). Multiplying the number of recaptures 

 in subsequent fishing season by the appropriate 

 standardization factor will equalize tag densities 

 from each tagging area so that meaningful com- 

 parisons can be made of the relative contribu- 

 tion of fish from different areas in succeeding 

 seasons. 



Fish tagged in Chesapeake Bay and the 

 Florida areas contributed most to landings in 

 other areas (Table 10). In New York and New 

 Jersey, 83.2% of the 1968 tag recoveries came 



Table 9. — 1967 adjustments of tags per million individual 

 fish landed to achieve equal density of tags (50 tags per 

 million individual fish) in each area. 



from fish tagged in Chesapeake Bay in 1967. In 

 Chesapeake Bay, 85.6% of the 1968 recoveries 

 were from fish tagged in that area in 1967. Fish 

 tagged in Florida the previous year made up 

 75.3% of the recoveries in North Carolina and 

 97.9% of the recoveries in Florida. The pattern 

 of migration was similar for fish tagged in 

 1968 and recaptured in 1969 (Table 11). 



Selection of either of the other two alterna- 

 tive approaches for determining the index den- 

 sity for each area had little effect in changing 

 the relative contributions from the different 

 areas. Table 12 shows the differences in rela- 

 tive contributions from spring and summer 

 releases recaptured in 1968. 



We have determined the destination of fish 

 tagged in each area based on the distribution of 

 recoveries in successive summers. The adjust- 

 ments of ratios do not in any way affect this 

 analysis. These percentages are based upon the 

 numbers of recaptures in the different areas 

 from all the releases in an area. For example, 

 Table 3 and Table 10 show that of the fish tag- 

 ged in Florida in 1967 and recaptured in the 

 summer of 1968, 26% were recovered in Florida, 

 33% in North Carolina, 34% in Chesapeake Bay, 



Table 10. — Calculated numbers of tags recovered and percentage distributions for 1967 

 summer releases recovered in summer 1968. 



Total 7,556 19,955 1,694 1,048 



Distribution of recoveries by area of recovery (where tagged fish came from). 



30,253 



N.Y. and N.J. 

 Chesapeake Boy 

 N.C. 

 Fla. 



N.Y. and N.J. 

 Chesapeake Bay 

 N.C. 

 Fla. 



' Adjusted numbers from Table 3. 



728 



