Biologists Going Fishing--for Information on Marlin

Scientists from the state Department of Fish and Game are out fishing as part of a program to study the elusive marlin.

Like dozens of weekend sport fishermen, the biologists are trolling for the hard-fighting game fish. The fish they catch will not end up hanging over a mantle, however. They will instead be tagged with radio beepers and tracked through the depths to see if they are potential victims of commercial fishing nets.

“These kinds of things bring people out of the woodwork,” said Dennis Bedford, the biologist in charge of the study. “We get plenty of people volunteering to fish off your boat. We’re not really interested in that.”

The fishing is being left to the crew of a state research vessel and veteran marlin anglers who cruise the waters around the Channel Islands off Southern California.

Bedford said many sport fishermen are anxious about the number of marlin that die in drift gill nets.

The gill nets often stretch as long as a mile and drift between 12 and 30 feet below the surface. They are used mainly to catch thresher shark and swordfish, staples at most California seafood restaurants.

Marlin is not much of a delicacy, but is big enough to be caught in the drift nets.

“It’s not a matter of the marlin being rare,” Bedford said. “It’s a question of the marlin being a sport-only fish. The incidents of the catch (by commercial fishermen) tend to reduce the success of the sport-fishing community.”

Bedford said there has been a controversy between biologists, who do not think the marlin catch is very large, and fishermen, who worry that it might be.

“After six years of trying to resolve this question with observations, we decided to take another tack,” Bedford said.

Researchers will cruise the islands at night to observe gill nets being hauled in. By day, the trolling rods will come out and the radio will be tuned to channels used by sport fishermen, primarily the Balboa Angling Club of Newport Beach.

A call from a sport-fishing boat will summon the state researchers. A five-inch tag will be attached to the back of the marlin, which will be released in the water.

“Once the tags are in place, four biologists will work in pairs on 12-hour shifts tracking the marlin. It will be a very long and tedious task,” Bedford said.

The tags will be sensitive to pressure to indicate the depth of the fish in the water. The results will be compiled by a computer after a seven-week fishing period that will run through November.

Bedford said fishing has been only so-so.

“This doesn’t appear it’s going to be an exceptional year for marlin.”