402 



Fishery Bulletin 88(2). 1990 



with capture and release. The first major horizontal 

 direction changes often coincide with changes in ver- 

 tical behavior and may represent the end of the 

 recovery period. 



Previous blue marlin tracks, and those acquired in 

 the present study, share the characteristic of essential- 

 ly straight or slowly curving azimuths. This contrasts 

 with the movements of nearshore tuna (Yuen 1970, 

 Holland et al. In press) and swordfish (Carey and Robi- 

 son 1981) which frequently display cyclical diel move- 

 ments that bring the fish back to their starting points. 

 If Pacific blue marlin have such a pattern in Hawaiian 

 waters, the cycle time for this behavior is longer than 

 any of the tracks so far obtained. At present, the im- 

 pression is that these animals swim along straight or 

 slightly curving courses as they move through the area. 



It is difficult to explain the difference in tagging mor- 

 tality between this study in which no fish died and the 

 previous one in which three of the five blue marlin died 

 (Yuen et al. 1974). Holts and Bedford (In press) also 

 report that none of their 1 1 striped marlin died as a 

 result of tagging trauma. Their results, and the results 

 reported here, support the practice of releasing marlin 

 caught on artificial lures by sportfishing techniques, 

 even if the fish are apparently exhausted. 



Acknowledgments 



This work was supported by the University of Hawaii 

 Sea Grant Program (Ultrasonic telemetry of Horizon- 

 tal and Vertical Movements of Pelagic Fish Associated 

 with FADs, project MR/R-25) under Institutional Grant 

 No. NA85AA-D-SG082 from the NOAA office of Sea 

 Grant, Department of Commerce; the Honolulu Labor- 

 atory, National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA; and 

 the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, University of 

 Hawaii. We also gratefully acknowledge the assistance 

 of Lts.(jg.) Mark Ablondi and Scott Sullivan, NOAA; 

 the Pacific Gamefish Research Foundation; the Hawaii 

 International Billfish Foundation; and the anglers and 

 captains of the 1988 and 1989 Hawaii International 

 Billfish Tournaments. 



Citations 



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1986 Materials and methods for tagging tuna and billfishes, 

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1982 Sonic tracking experiments with tunas. ICCAT Collec- 

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1981 Daily patterns in the activities of the swordfish Xiphias 

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