SCRS/200x/186 RESULTS OF A PILOT ARCHIVAL TAGGING PROGRAMME INCLUDING A PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF FACTORS, AT THE POINT OF RELEASE, AFFECTING TAG RECOVERY FOR ALBACORE TUNA (Thunnus alalunga) IN THE NORTH EAST ATLANTIC

• Main Authors: Ronan Cosgrove, Igor Arregi, Deirdre Brophy, Haritz Arrizabalaga, Nigel Griffin
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: North East Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.547.3509; http://www.iccat.int/documents/meetings/docs/scrs/scrs-08-186_cosgrove_et_al.pdf

This paper describes a pilot archival tagging study on albacore tuna, carried out in the Bay of Biscay from 2005 to 2008. Involving several European Institutes, the study aimed to obtain an estimate of recovery rates for fish tagged with ‘dummy ’ archival tags, in order to assess the feasibility of conducting an archival tagging study for albacore tuna in the North East Atlantic. A total of 353 fish were tagged and released and 8 fish (2.27%) were recaptured. A database of conventional tagged albacore tuna provided by ICCAT permitted a multivariate analysis of factors affecting tag recovery such as fishing gear, month, effort level and fish size, at the time of release, to be carried out using a binary logistic regression. The results of this analysis suggest that fish which are caught by trolling, between 65 and 74 cm FL, during periods of relatively high fishing effort, at the point of release, have the highest probability of recapture in the North East Atlantic.