Table 1. — Billfishes tagged and recaptured in the Pacific by cooperative marine game fish tagging programs. 



Species 



Striped Black Blue 

 Year Organization marlin marlin marlin Sailfish Totals 



Species 



Striped Black Blue 

 Year Organization marlin marlin marlin Sailfish Totals 



1966 



1967 



1968 



1969 



1970 



1971 Ai 0/9 — 0/12 0/12 0/33 



A2 2/1.401 1/235 0/73 0/409 3/2.118 



Also 1 shortbill spearfish (Telraplurus angustiroslris) tagged 

 B _____ 



Totals 



85/9.849 2/622 0/24810/4.821 97/15.540 



NOTE: Releases (right of slash), returns (left of slash) by organization conducting the tagging. Returns are listed by year of 

 recapture forWHOI. NMFS and CF&G lists recapture by year of tagging. 



A. Cooperative Marine Game Fish Tagging Program. 



Ai Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, from 1954. 

 A2 National Marine Fisheries Service, from 1963. 



B. California Department of Fish and Game. 



of the total. The FM-67 and FT-1 tags are buoyant 

 and a number of these have been returned after 

 being picked up on the beach after being used to tag 

 a billfish. These tags may have been lost overboard 

 during the tagging process or may have been shed 

 after tagging. Recoveries were considered valid 

 only when the tag was taken from a recently caught 

 fish. 



The Cooperative Marine Game Fish Tagging 

 program (National Marine Fisheries Service 

 — Pacific) issued a conservation certificate to both 

 the tagger and recoverer. A cash reward was paid to 

 the tag recoverer by all three programs. 



Table 2 gives the percentage rate of recovery by 

 program, by year, and total recovery rate for each 



species and for all billfish tagged. Table 3 gives a 

 summation of the rate of return for each of the three 

 cooperative tagging programs. 



Tag Performance 



For the four types of tags used by the cooperative 

 programs (FT-1, FM-67, C. and H) a comparison of 

 tag performance can be made for the types FT-1 

 used by the California Department of Fish and 

 Game, and the National Marine Fisheries Service 

 and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. 



Recovery data for 10,777 tags used by the Na- 

 tional Marine Fisheries Service Cooperative Tag- 

 ging program and 958 tags used by the California 



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