The SWFSC Cooperative Billfish Tagging Program, 1963-2021

The Southwest Fisheries Science Center (SWFSC) Cooperative Billfish Tagging Program (CBTP) is a conventional mark-recapture research venture between National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists and the global recreational and commercial fishing community, with efforts focused in the Pacific Ocean. The CBTP has provided conventional analog tags to anglers around the world to tag billfish and other large pelagic species to collect distribution, abundance, movement, and morphometric data valuable in quantifying life history parameters used in management. The CBTP comprises the Billfish Tagging Program and the International Billfish Angler Survey. All three components require year-round operations to distribute tagging equipment, deliver and receive surveys, and process, store, and manage data.

The International Billfish Angler Survey of the SWFSC Cooperative Billfish Tagging Program (CBTP) provides estimates of billfish angling activities in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. This collection of recreational billfish catch and effort has occurred annually since 1969 and provides an index of fishing success in many Pacific billfish destinations.

The SWFSC CBTP sends out surveys (hardcopy from 1969 to 2017, digital from 2017 to 2019) to participating anglers at the beginning of each calendar year to report their catch and effort in the prior year. Anglers report the number of whole fishing days per fishing location as yearly effort, and report billfish catch (kept and released) by species at each location.

The data reported to the SWFSC from constituents is voluntary and not verified at time of collection by NOAA staff or a credential scientific party, unless specifically indicated as “research” in the Billfish Database. As such, fish weights and lengths, fish condition, and fight time are largely estimated by the angler or captain. Although many location coordinates may be accurately sourced from Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment, all locations are treated as estimates. Blanks are treated as “No data”, as the number “0” is a valid code for some data fields. These data issues should be considered before interpreting any analyses based on SWFSC Cooperative Billfish Tagging data.

For detailed information on the Cooperative Billfish Tagging Program, please refer to Heberer, L.N., Wraith, J., Kohin, S., Gu, Y., Nasby-Lucas, N.D., and Dewar, H. 2021. The NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center Cooperative Billfish Tagging Program Operations and Database. NOAA Tech. Memo. NMFS-SWFSC-640 at https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/28449.

This document details the technical aspects of the CBTP as it operated upon discontinuation in 2021, including equipment acquisition, database structure, and operational design and execution. Given the CBTP protocols could serve as a template for current or future conventional mark-recapture programs, recommendations are also provided to improve upon current protocols. This document serves as the official reference for the program and provides detailed metadata for the historical dataset available to the public.

Data is publicly available, no constraints for raw or summarized data.

In some instances, billfish are known to be misidentified. Location information is largely estimated by voluntary recreational anglers.

Survey results are manually checked for errors. Outliers are removed until the person who submitted the questionable results is contacted and the information is verified.

Data are stored on a server at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center which has all appropriate access controls.

An electronic form or paper hard-copy Billfish Angler Survey is sent out at the beginning of each calendar year to cooperative anglers that have participated in the SWFSC Tagging Program or returned an Angler Survey within the most recent three years. Electronic forms are sent by email and also available online at the SWFSC website: http://swfsc.noaa.gov/FRD-Billfish/. Electronic forms are returned by email. Paper forms are sent to anglers that have not provided an email address and return postage is paid within the U.S.A. Anglers report the locations fished, number of days targeting billfish, and and number of billfish caught by species. Data is manually entered into database.