ORI Tagging Programme

[Conrad Botes]

It would be interesting to see which forum members are part of the Oceanic Research Institute's tagging programme. According to the ORI newsletter Niel Malan, a Flytalk member, tagged 22 fish during 2007. Another prominent fly-fisher tagging fish for the ORI is Anthony Kruger, who tagged 72fish during 2007. I also joined the ORI tagging programme and have tagged 15fish since October last year.

How many of the rock & surf forumers are ORI members?

Criteria for tagging fish are very specific to certain categories. The most common category is D-tags, used for small fish in estuaries etc. You can only tag fish between 30 and 60 cm in this category.

Some interesting facts about the tagging programme:
Species most tagged are galjoen with 47 170 fish tagged and 3 382 fish recaptured.
The longest distances travelled by recaptured fish are: 1897 km (ragged tooth shark), 1790km (bronze whaler), 1737km (pickhandle barracuda), 1678km (elf), 1670km (garrick).
Longest period free before being recaptured: 4685 days (ragged tooth shark) and 4370 days (dusky kob).
The highest percentage of fished recaptured in a specific species are speckled snapper with 30.07% of tagged fish recaptured. An interesting one here is great barracuda with 16 of the 67 fish tagged being recaptured, thus a recapture percentage of 23.53%, which is very high.

I would recommend anyone with an interest in saltwater angling to join the ORI tagging initiative.