We went on a science trip last week to target baby bluefin tuna. We caught a bunch of stuff including a bunch of little tuna. Not sure what we had, we took them all to VIMS and let them sort them out. It turned out that we had a mixture of bluefin and blackfin. 33 of the little tuna were bluefins which made the scientists happy but they wanted more. We went out again yesterday on another science trip and this time, I brought a scientist along (Dr. John Graves).

The weather was great. It was hard to believe that just the day before, we had Hanna sitting on top of us. We fished the Cigar area. Most of our time was spent in about 30 fathoms. Again, we had a lot of action. We caught skipjack, false albacore, blackfin, bluefin, some type of jack, and a good number of dolphin. We were pulling Clark spoons for the tuna. We did have some bigger stuff off of the riggers for billfish but we never saw any.

Not many boats were out there. There was one other with us. They caught dolphin and a single, 65-pound yellowfin tuna. Another boat, out deeper, came in flying 3 white marlin and 2 sailfish flags. A couple boats at the Norfolk Canyon reported big catches of dolphin.

I think I have the ID of the little tunas down now. The best way (short of counting gill rakers, which is rather hard to do with a live fish) is to look at the pectoral fin. Lay the fin down against the fish’s side. Look at where the first dorsal fin ends and second dorsal begins. The blackfin’s pectoral fin will be pretty much at the notch between the dorsals while the bluefin’s pectoral fin will be well short of that notch. Coloration can be deceiving. The blackfin will have a golden color but some of the larger baby bluefins also had some yellow/gold coloration. The bluefin has a distinct vertical pattern but some of the smaller blackfins would show more of a vertical pattern. The pectoral fin length seemed to be the best way to tell them apart on the fly.

We did not catch as many bluefin this time. We ended up with 17 young of the year fish which will be used in various research projects.



(note: we were fishing for undersized bluefin under a special permit)

So on those pics, the order goes Bluefin, Blackfin, Bluefin, False Albacore, Skipjack, Skipjack, Jack? Or is that first one the same Blackfin with the pec fin sticking straight out?

Blackfin (though I can not tell until the peck fin is folded down), blackfin, bluefin, false albacore, skip, skip, some kind of jack.

The bluefin pecks were about half the length of the blackfin.

Very cool Ken, it's nice to see the recreational guys out there trying to help the scientists conserve the tuna, god knows they need the help.

allright so who wants to be the first to bridle one of those bad boys up and take it deep

good stuff, Ken

Hello Ken,
Thanks for not just being an awesome fisherman in your own right and catching record breaking fish. The fact that you report on it, get folks amped up about it, and share some tips automatically separates you from the norm.

The fact that you take time out of your work, when you could be fishing, to work on studies with the other scientists just to participate in collective studies gravitates you to a higher level.

You are truly a steward of the sea and I hope I can shake your hand some day for it.

Keep up the good work, Steve.

I appreciate the kind words. I've learned a lot by helping out the scientists. It was not so much fun when they needed a bunch of spiney dogfish but then again, it has been a whole lot of fun helping them get tags out in marlin.

I though that I was done with the undersized bluefin for this year but I guess not. Some scientist needs a few "fresh" samples:

Ken:

It doesn't pay to get too good at something. Word of your abilities to
catch young of the year bluefin has spread like wildfire. Molly Lutcavage
just called me from New Hampshire and wanted to know if her student could
come down to get some. He is studying maturity schedules in bluefin for
his dissertation and is also trying to understand when (and how) sex
determination works in this species. It is likely that the small fish may
be able to shed some light on this. He needs fresh fish.

Would you be willing to make another trip to the Cigar (heck, maybe even
the canyon)? This could be done around any
other plans you might have. For example, if the weather cooperates and you
want to do an overnighter this weekend. Alternately, if you just want do a day trip to
the Cigar on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday, that would be fine. The student
only needs about 10 fish, so you might be able to fish for some more
interesting critters as well.

Cheers,

John

Ken that is awesome.

Very cool guys... read about it on another New England site here in the Northeast. Molly has been and continues to be the top researcher here helping bluefins. It would really COOL to see some of those littel guys tagged and released and see where they end up....please think about it and I'm sure you will talk with Molly more about it.

Thanks from us all for putting in the time to do this stuff...just awesome !!

-Capt. John Ford
Portland, Maine

We got Molly's student 18 little bluefin this weekend (I'll post a full report later). He also caught his first ever marlin while he was here and got to go swimming back at the dock. I have some of the Tag-A-Tiny tags. These fish are so small I wonder if those tags would be too much for them.