National Marine Fisheries Service
Southeast Region
9721 Executive Center Drive, North,
St. Petersburg, FL 33702

SERO NR98

   

CONTACT:                                    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Chris Smith, Public Affairs Officer         7/7/98             
Scott Nichols, Director 
NMFS Pascagoula Laboratory

In early July, the National Marine Fisheries Service will begin the second phase of a program to recapture tagged red drum (redfish) to estimate the size of the population in the Gulf of Mexico, the agency announced today.

The recapture program will last about 30 days in waters from Alabama to Texas, where large numbers of red drum will be captured to retrieve last year's tags. Data from the tags will help determine whether recent conservation efforts have been sufficient to allow the stock to rebuild. During the project's first phase in 1997, the Fisheries Service tagged 9,733 adult red drum with either a dart tag, a belly tag or both. The fish were captured and released between Mobile, Ala., and Galveston, Texas.

In 1987, Fisheries Service scientists determined that the Gulf's red drum stock was severely overfished. Since Jan.1, 1988, federal waters have been closed to both commercial and recreational red drum landings. In addition, the Gulf states have further restricted fishing in their waters to allow more juvenile red drum to join the offshore spawning stock.

"We'll use the same methods for capturing red drum as we did for tagging last year," said Scott Nichols, director of Fisheries Service's Pascagoula laboratory. "We use a small plane to spot schools of red drum in order to direct a contract fishing vessel that sets a purse seine net around a portion of the school. Scientists then use hand-held nets to remove the fish from the seine. Those fish will be placed on a table, quickly examined for tags, and immediately returned to the sea."

According to Nichols, the research team will employ several measures to lessen the potential for captured fish to become stressed or die. Relatively few fish will be held in the purse seine awaiting to be transferred to the examining table; scientists will monitor whether the red drum school is becoming stressed by lowering a video camera to the bottom of the purse seine net; the team will continuously monitor temperature and dissolved oxygen levels; and the crew will constantly make observations for slack water that may increase the risk to the fish.

The Fisheries Service is an agency of the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Fisheries Service conducts scientific research and provides services and products to support fisheries management, fisheries development, trade and industry assistance, enforcement, and protected species and habitat conservation programs.

This and other Southeast Regional news releases are available on the Internet at http://caldera.sero.nmfs.gov.