As you may know, Release Boatworks is the founding member of the Boat Builders For Billfish Coalition, and we strive to generate support for the IGFA Great Marlin Race (IGMR), the world’s most extensive billfish satellite tagging program.
We believe in supporting the study of billfish populations and migration patterns to ensure a strong future in the sportfishing industry for years to come, but we can’t do that without the participation of our recreational anglers.
Recreational anglers, armed with cutting-edge satellite tag technology, become citizen scientists and deploy tags on the billfish they catch. These tags transmit data to researchers who learn more about billfish biology and how the fish interact with their habitat.
Since the program launched in 2011, IGFA has tagged over 400 billfish in 21 countries and logged over 218,000 nautical miles of movement. Understanding where these animals go and how they utilize their habitat provides invaluable data to scientists and resource managers to help ensure long-term billfish conservation. The IGMR has fundamentally changed the way that scientists, anglers, and policymakers understand billfish.
The IGFA Great Marlin Race (IGMR), presented by Costa Sunglasses®, is a partnership between IGFA and Stanford University that pairs recreational anglers with cutting-edge science to learn more about the basic biology of marlin and how they utilize the open ocean habitat. The goal of the program is to deploy 50 pop up archival tags (PAT) in marlin at billfish tournaments around the world each year. This effort will increase understanding of distribution, population structure and biology of marlin and engage anglers and the general public in the research process. By increasing our understanding of where these animals go and how they use the pelagic ecosystem, we will provide valuable information to the resource managers and policy makers responsible for ensuring their long-term conservation.
For more information on how you can participate, visit their website here: https://igfa.org/the-great-marlin-race/
Published by Lacey Hagler.
