New Major Recoveries off Ocean City, MD  and Long Island, NY

Captain David Wamer began participating in the Dolphinfish Research Program (DRP) in 2009 aboard his vessel, WamJam.  Since then, the WamJam Fishing Team has tagged and released over 280 dolphin, of which 6 have been recovered.  Their tagged dolphin have allowed us to track movements up the eastern Florida shelf from the Keys to northern Florida as well as a return migrant that grew 24" in 388 days recovered off South Carolina and a movement between Marathon and the Outer Banks in 54 days.  We are excited to announce that a WamJam team member, Charlie Jamison, just added another recovery to their list.  His fish, reported by Brittany Groth of Elkton, Maryland (MD), was recaptured while fishing with Playtime Charters based out of Ocean City, MD, in mid-July.  The peanut dolphin moved from off Marathon to MD in 31 days.  This is the team's first fish to move into the Mid-Atlantic Bight and only the 16th fish for the DRP to travel from Florida up nearly the entire eastern seaboard.  But, thanks to Captain William Adams, who started tagging for the DRP in 2018 off central Florida, we now have 17 examples.  Captain Adams, while fishing with his family aboard Blue Boat in May, tagged and released 4 small dolphin and one was just recovered near the Ryan and McMaster Canyons off Long Island, NY.  The fish was recovered by Captain Ray Muscarella of Yaphank, NY, and measured 27" fork-length.  Remarkably, given the time at large of 60 days, this equates to an incredilble growth rate of 1.05"/week.  A huge thanks goes out to all parties involved in helping the DRP record new and facinating movements and life history information of this amazing species. 

Youth Angler Division Progress

The Beyond Our Shores Foundation and the DRP have partnered with the Boy Scouts of Amercia based out of the Florida Sea Base Brinton Environmental Center in Summerland Key to outfit scouts with tags as well as teach them data science techniques for collecting, archiving, and analyzing tagging data.  To date, the scouts have tagged and released 72 small dolphinfish and entered the data with code into our database for further processing.  We believe that not only is it important to encourage youth to get involved in fisheries and ocean conservation through tagging but also to teach them techniques and provide them with tools to advance their knowledge of science and our natural resources.  Click the map above to view the Scouts' tagging progress off Summerland Key including 2 recoveries already generated from their efforts!   

Last month we reported that, for the first time in the history of the DRP, a dolphin we tagged with a satellite tag was recaptured. Thanks to many different individuals involved in the recapture, the DRP was able to successfully retrieve the tag and physcially drop it off to be processed by the tag manufacturor.  Because we were able to physically retrieve the tag, we will receive considerably more data from it and are also able to refurbish it to be redeployed on another dolphin at a substantially cheaper cost ($1,100 as opposed to $4,200).  Help the DRP raise these funds to refurbish this tag so we can redeploy it on another qualifying trophy dolphin in order to record more migration data of these fascinating animals.  Please donate what you can to help us refurbish this satellite tag.  To read more about the history of the DRP's satellite tracking program and why it's important to collect quantitative migration data on dolphin, click here.

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