The White Marlin tracking project has been running since August 1, 2012. Onboard the sportfisher Makara, we have caught and recorded 83 white marlin and 2 blue marlin during this time and those locations are on the map above. And as reported here on the Ocean City White Marlin Club Report, over 1500 marlin have been caught since July 1, 2012. Impressive numbers for a species of fish that a decade ago was consider for an endangered species listing.

 

We are still working on how to expand the fish tagging/tracking/reporting capability for billfish along the East Coast.  Our new app (in development) Fishtagger will enable all anglers to submit their catches without tagging to a common, open, shared database so all can see where the fish are, who is catching and both enjoy fishing more while contributing data to researchers to better manage the stock.  This is a work in progress. We will see how it develops.

 

And here is the fishing map for the region. We hope to overlay weather, water team plus real time fish catches on this map in 2013.