438 



Fishery Bulletin 104(3) 



(Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, spring 2004). The aver- 

 age proportion of white marlin dead at haulback across 

 all seasons and trips was 35.4%. 



PSATs were applied to 28 white marlin at the time 

 of haulback. All live white marlin brought to the vessel 

 were tagged regardless of physical condition until the 

 supply of tags available on that trip was exhausted (i.e., 

 if a fish was evaluated as being alive, it was tagged). 

 Estimated weights of tagged fish ranged from 14-27 kg 

 (30-60 pounds) and detailed information for each indi- 

 vidual tagged (including hook location, fate, and mini- 

 mum straight-line distance) is presented in Table 2. 

 Three white marlin tagged with PSATs were caught 

 on leaders attached to electronic hook-time recorders, 

 allowing us to determine the length of time the animal 

 was on the hook before release. Two fish (YC-04-01 and 

 WP-0401) struck the bait in the early morning after 



local sunrise (7:32 and 8:13 a.m. local time, respec- 

 tively) and were on the line only for approximately 1.5 

 hours before release. The third fish (MA-03-01) was 

 caught during haulback at 9:52 p.m. local time on one 

 of the few sets retrieved at night and was hooked for 

 only 11 minutes. 



Tag performance 



In the pilot study, four of six tags (67%) transmitted 

 archived data as programmed. One tag separated from 

 the fish prematurely several hours after deployment and 

 the data from this tag were omitted from subsequent 

 analyses. For each of the three transmitting early model 

 PTT-100 tags, 100% of the 63 archived data points were 

 received, whereas approximately 33% of the summary 

 data were received from the PAT tag. In the main study. 



