Four different tag designs were tried during the 

 course of the program. These were: 



1. A monel metal "disc tag" fastened to the fish's 

 bill by two strands of silver wire. 



2. A neoprene rubber ring with metal strip at- 

 tached that was applied over the fish's bill. 



3. Clamp-on monel and stainless steel tags used 

 to mark the ears of cattle (cattle tags), which 

 were applied to the leading edge of the dorsal or 

 pectoral fin. 



4. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 

 "Type B" (Fig. 1) dart tag inserted in the 

 fish's back muscles. 



T^€ 7 



B 



C 

 D 



E 

 M 



H 



WH 



N 



Figure 1. — Types of tags used for sailfish in the Coopera- 

 tive Game Fish Tagging Program of WHOI. The type B 

 tag was also one of those used in the Cooperative Sailfish 

 Tagging Program of RSMAS. 



PARR members marked 395 sailfish with monel 

 cattle tags (similar to number 3 in the list of tags 

 used by RSMAS), supplied by the club, in the years 

 1954-1962. The members of PARR began cooperat- 

 ing actively with the WHOI program, using WHOI 

 tags, in 1957, and gradually phased out the use of 

 PARR monel ear tags. The tagging was carried out 

 in the immediate vicinity of Port Aransas. 



Sportsmen cooperating with WHOI have tagged 

 over 12,000 sailfish since 1954 with various types of 

 dart tags (Mather, 1963) (Fig. 1). The majority of 

 the tagging was concentrated along the southeast 

 coast of Florida and the Florida Keys, but impor- 

 tant numbers offish were also tagged in the Gulf of 

 Mexico, off the Bahamas, off the Virgin Islands, off 

 Venezuela, and off the Yucatan Peninsula. Lesser 

 numbers were tagged bff northeastern Florida, 

 North Carolina, Maryland, and Delaware. 



RESULTS 



From March 1950 through 15 July 1972, 14,299 

 sailfish have been tagged and released; 109 returns 

 have resulted. The releases and returns are sum- 

 marized by year, area of release, and program in 

 Table 1 . The release and recapture data for the re- 

 turns, grouped according to release area and, for 

 the southeast Florida area which comprises most of 

 the returns, by recapture area also, are listed in the 

 Appendix. The monthly distribution of tagging ef- 

 fort in each release area is shown in Table 2. The 

 times at liberty for the recaptured sailfish are sum- 

 marized in Table 3. The fishing methods by which 

 they were recaptured, and the nationalities of the 

 recapturing vessels, are shown in Table 4. 



Tag Returns 



The majority (9,710) of the releases were off the 

 southeastern coast of Florida and the Florida Keys 

 (between Fort Pierce and Key West). The majority 

 (80) of the returns were from these releases (Table 

 1). Most of these recaptures (73) were in this same 

 area, but two were near Havana, three in the Gulf 

 of Mexico, one off North Carolina, and one off the 

 Bahamas (Fig. 2; Appendix Table 1). Among the 

 returns from the release area, the net distance 

 traveled was undeterminable for four and less than 

 20 miles for 21 (Appendix Table 2), more than 20 

 miles northward from the release site for 16 (Ap- 

 pendix Table 3), and more than 20 miles southward 

 from the release site for 32 (Appendix Table 4). 



195 



