Marlin and tuna tagging project
When we arrived to Oman very little was known about the Marlin fishery that we have here. The locals considered Marlin as a by catch when targeting Tuna, it is therefore rarely seen in the fish markets. After years of exploring the drop offs and offshore we have built a fantastic Marlin catch and release fishery.
We started our conservation efforts using Billfish Foundation tags and recording our catch data on their worldwide website.
We have recently embarked on a new project in conjunction with KAUST university. We will be deploying 60 satellite and tags over two seasons (both SPOT and PSAT tags). These tags will give us data on both movement and depth of these fish.
We also just finished up a two year tuna PSAT tagging project in conjunction with KAUST university. The knowledge we gained from this project has been outstanding. With new dive depth record set for the Indian ocean and a better understanding of numbers of tuna and their movements. We learned a lot about how to handle the fish and how difficult it is to release them after capture.
Data from the project will be posted soon so watch this space