428 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
long-lines are out, or other work is undertaken in the interval, the 
signals facilitate locating expensive gear again, to say nothing of the 
catch. 
We completed four trials with that long-line, not counting a dry run 
with a couple of sections, to acquaint our crew with the gear. Two of 
the four actual trials were made from the Freelance off Anegada, April 
9, and southwest of Redonda, April 18—both unproductive except for 
an 8-foot white-tipped shark, Carcharhinus longimanus, on the first 
trial off Anegada. Specimenwise, his stomach was empty. His sharp- 
toothed jaws, dissected out for clinching our field identification, now 
repose in the National collections. We were unable to get a picture 
of the shark because in the excitement of landing him we could not 
see the fish for the men, and a dead, disemboweled shark on deck in a 
tangle of ropes is not a photogenic subject. 
When we got to St. Johns, Antigua, and met Ralph Camacho, fishery 
officer to the Antiguan Department of Agriculture, the possibilities of 
long-line fishing appealed so to him that he kindly offered to take us 
out for further trials on his 41-foot experimental fishing vessel, the 
Commando, a most practical, well-powered craft. With his more ex- 
pert fishermen and the bait that he was able to obtain, our gear yielded 
somewhat more promising results. On the first of the two runs he 
made, the one in the vicinity of French Bank, off the north end of 
Martinique, we drew another blank. On the second, however, on April 
29, well to the eastward of Barbuda, we had our best luck. Here the 
bottom dropped off suddenly over a “precipice,” from 50 to more than 
200 and as suddenly again to 1,000 fathoms. Long-lines seem to yield 
the best results when fishing is done in waters of 500 fathoms and more, 
and so it was with us this day. The Commando got two 8-foot dusky 
sharks, Carcharhinus obscurus, a 1014-foot blue marlin, Makaira 
nigricans ampla, and five 4-foot dolphins, Coryphaena hippurus. 
Attracted perhaps by the baited long-line as it was being taken in, these 
swift blue-and-gold beauties were schooling about the last flag buoy. 
Caught on baited hand-lines quickly thrown over to tempt them, they 
were pulled aboard after many spectacular leaps. 
Between making this set in the early morning and hauling it in in 
the early afternoon, the Commando resorted to a fishing ground 
farther in to fill in the time hand-lining. It was, indeed, a fortunate 
day all around—corvalos, amberjacks, and black-spotted and Carib- 
bean snappers, these last in several lots of four and five, and in one 
instance six, on a single hand line. The blue marlin, though, was the 
prize catch. Since our trip with him, Ralph Camacho landed an even 
larger one—a 12-footer which weighed 426 pounds dressed, and which 
he is confident would have tipped the scales at at least 500 pounds in 
the round. It took 53 minutes to boat that fellow. But the grand- 
