Table 7. — Numbers of hooks (in thousands) fished by the Japanese longline fishery in the Atlantic, by years, 1956-70, and areas, 



(see Fig. 13). Data furnished by J. P. Wise (pers. commun.). 



mainly in the eastern Caribbean and adjacent Atlan- 

 tic waters (Mihara and Griffiths, 1971). Five Brazilian 

 longliners set 598,000 hooks in 554 fishing days in 1971 

 (Paiva, 1972). Miyake and Tibbo (1972) show only 

 small (less than 50 ton) annual catches of Atlantic 

 billfishes for Mexico ( 1964-70) and the Union of Soviet 

 Socialist Republics (1967-71), but we found no further 

 information on these fisheries. Moroccan, Portuguese, 

 and Spanish trap and hook and line fisheries also take 

 some white marlin (Furnestin et al., 1958; Rodriguez- 

 Roda and Howard, 1962; Robins, 1974). 



The average geographical distribution of the 

 Japanese longline fishery in terms of intensity is 

 shown by quarters of the year by Wise and Davis 

 (1973, Fig. 3). Most of the effort is in tropical waters. 

 Extensions of intensive effort to latitudes higher than 

 20° occur in the central North Atlantic during each 

 quarter and in the western North Atlantic, including 

 the Gulf of Mexico, in the second and third quarters. 

 In the South Atlantic, such extensions occur mainly 

 on the western side in the first quarter and on the 

 eastern side in the second and third quarters. In the 

 fourth quarter, the southward extension is nearly 

 oceanwide. 



Seasonal changes in effort are probably caused 

 mainly by the seasonal distributional cycles of the 

 species being fished, which are in turn affected by 

 various factors (see 2.2, 2.3). 



Year-to-year changes in effort are probably caused, 

 for the most part, by the interaction of economic and 

 biological factors. The basic determinants are, for 

 capitalistic countries at least, the market value of the 

 fish and the costs of catching them. Naturally, costs 

 depend on wage scales and the costs of boats, equip- 

 ment, and bait, as well as the availability of the fish. 

 Since the white marlin is usually an incidental catch, 

 however, the commercial fishing effort to which it is 



subjected is usually determined by the economics of 

 the fisheries for more important species, such as the 

 yellowfin tuna, the albacore, Thunnus alalunga, and 

 the bigeye tuna, T. obesus. 



The effort of sport fisheries is much more difficult to 

 determine. Hundreds of charter and thousands of 

 private sport fishing boats fish for white marlin from 

 Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod, off southeastern Florida, 

 in the Gulf of Mexico, off the Bahamas and the West 

 Indies, and off Venezuela. The number of boats is dif- 

 ficult to estimate, as many move from place to place 

 seasonally. The actual effort for white marlin is even 

 more difficult to estimate, since other species are 

 usually being fished for concurrently, and boats often 

 divide their effort, over the season or the year, among 

 various types of fishing. 



Nakamura and Rivas (1972) listed the effort ex- 

 pended by members of the New Orleans Big Game 

 Fishing Club off South Pass, La., 1967-71, and by 

 anglers from the Florida ports of Destin, Panama 

 City, and Pensacola in 1971. The effort varied 

 between 2,339 and 5,801 boat-hours per season off 

 South Pass and totalled 7,890 boat-hours in one 

 season off the three Florida ports. 



When the white marlin sport fishery at Ocean City 

 began in 1936, there were 12 charter boats and by 

 1939, there were 39. After the lull during World War 

 II, there were about 40 boats during the period from 

 1946 through 1953 (June and Reintjes, 1957). Since 

 then the number increased to the present level of 

 about 70. 



The number of boats in the Venezuelan inter- 

 national fishing tournaments (in most of which 

 sailfish and blue marlin are taken, as well as white 

 marlin) increased from the low to middle 20's in the 

 earlier years to 43 in 1970 (Anon., 1971). 



The number of boats in the Atlantic City Marlin 



86 



