In 2017, we began monitoring our tagging program's top tagging team, Killin' Time II, for every outing they embarked on using Pelagic Data System vessel tracking devices. Using this dataset, we submitted this letter to the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council in 2022, which pointed to an alarming trend in low catch of large dolphinfish despite tremendous offshore effort for the vessel, a trend consistent with other vessels tracked in the area, plus anecdotal reports from Florida Keys recreational anglers. This year, we have continued to document every outing (n=32) for Killin Time II, and the largest fish they have encountered was a 37" or 16-pound bull despite spending 256 hours and covering 2,300 miles offshore. In total, Killin' Time II has only landed 37 fish this season with a size range from 20" to 37" fork-length. While the trend for low frequency of keepers and gaffer-sized fish has continued for Killin' Time II, artisanal anglers in the Dominican Republic, less than a thousand miles away, continue to land solid amounts of large dolphinfish per
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Greatest single day catch in 25' for Boat 1
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outing based on our ongoing data collection. On July 6th, 2023, we began collecting catch statistics from artisanal anglers in the Dominican Republic (DR) for a fee per report. This work is funded by supporters of our group, the Beyond Our Shores Foundation. We have monitored two vessels for every outing for two years, as well as a group of 2-3 vessels that have periodically submitted reports for the past year. For the past two years, Boat 1, the vessel that has exuded the highest effort, has landed 60,470 pounds of dolphinfish, averaging 370 pounds per outing for 192 offshore (n=163) and coastal outings (n=29). On an annual basis (i.e., July to June), during years 1 and 2, the vessel landed 24,977 pounds and 29,332 pounds, respectively. When Boat 1's July 2023 to June 2024 catch statistics are compared to the most recent dolphinfish catch statistics submitted by the government of DR to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), this vessel's landings would amount to 3.4% of that value (720,000 pounds landed during 2023). Based on the most recent reports from the DR, there are an estimated 2,500 dolphinfish artisanal anglers active which lends the question, are artisanal dolphinfish fishery landings in the Greater Antilles affecting catch in the Florida Keys recreational fishery? It is important to note that there are no dolphinfish catch statistics from Haiti, Jamaica, or the Bahamas, yet the species is known to be caught in artisanal fisheries in those nations, and Cuba estimates only 14,000 pounds of dolphinfish were landed for the nation in 2023. This article builds upon our work, published in the journal of Marine Policy in 2022 (click here), that stresses nations in the region need to adopt a precautionary approach for proper fishery management of dolphinfish, not only to increase spawning biomass but also for overall stock health and its conservation. If interested, we also published a similar paper on wahoo this year (click here to read more).
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Reported releases from January 1, 2025, to July, 29, 2025, continue to have our program headed for a stellar year of data collection throughout the Western Central Atlantic and Eastern Tropical Pacific Oceans. Looking back on the past 24 years, 2025 tag deployments through last Friday are the fourth highest ever recorded and best first half of the year since 2010. From these tag deployments, 27 new movements have been generated and another person found one of our satellite tags on Elmer's Island, Louisianna, which is the second tag found on a beach in the Gulf of America over the past two months. The tag popped off a 48" wahoo south of PR on October 12, 2024. The tag was discovered on July 15, 276 days after it was last observed south of PR. A special thanks goes out to Amber and her family for reporting this tag to our program!
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Support Our Work - Shop or Donate!
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July FL to Baltimore Canyon, MD
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July FL to Outer Banks, NC
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Support Our Research in 2025
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For the past seven years, we have built a 501(c)(3) known as the Beyond Our Shores Foundation to manage and expand an international tagging program on dolphinfish and focus on other key fisheries research topics throughout the Western Central Atlantic and Eastern Tropical Pacific Oceans. With the support of hundreds of private donors and several key corporate sponsors, the Dolphinfish Research Program continues to compile new movement records and data on dolphinfish in the Western Central Atlantic and Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean. As of today, 39,250 dolphinfish have been tagged for the DRP and 889 recaptures have been recorded. In addition, 132 satellite tags have been deployed on dolphinfish and 11 on wahoo. Collectively, these data have been used to publish 17 scientific articles, and the data is publicly available at dolphintagging.com/map. With three key scientific papers in preparation on dolphinfish growth, detailed regional movement dynamics, and catch and effort as well as our ambitious distribution goals this year (400 kits and 5,000 tags), we need your support to achieve these key outcomes. As of today, we have distributed 201
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tagging kits or 2,653 tags. Help the DRP expand in 2025. Click the icons below to shop or donate to support our program.
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| | Eastern Tropical Pacific Research Partners
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