Go Fishing on Duxbury Reef! Volunteers Help With Fish
Tagging Study

July 31, 2006

Contact: Christina S. Johnson, csjohnson@ucsd.edu, 858-822-5334

The California Sea Grant Extension Program invites you to board a chartered recreational fishing boat and catch rockfish in a popular fishing area south of Bolinas in Marin County called Duxbury Reef.

The “catch” is you will be asked to tag and release any fish you land.

The tagging project is part of a Sea Grant-led effort to learn more about the health of local fish populations. Volunteers are a big part of the program’s success. To sign up or learn more, please email Kristen Green at kgreen@mlml.calstate.edu or call 831-771-4479.

Phil Giovannini and his son,

Graduate student Kristen Green shows a canary rockfish to a young angler. Credit: California Sea Grant Extension Program

The next trips are scheduled for August 7–8 and September 6–7.

Here’s an update of what’s been going on so far in 2006, written by Kristen Green.

Rockfish season opened July 1, and we’re starting to get calls from local anglers who have recaptured fish near the Duxbury area. So far this summer, we’ve fished two days in June and two days in July at Duxbury Reef. We’ve been fishing out of Sausalito on Roger Thomas’ boat, the Salty Lady. We had great weather and a full boat of anglers in June and tagged more than 500 fish in two days. On the second day in June, we caught a lingcod that regurgitated a tagged canary rockfish from the day before! We tagged the lingcod, but sent it back overboard without its dinner.

In July, we had a mix of northwest and south swells in the mornings, which resulted in some crossed-up drifts and seasick passengers. However, by the afternoon, the swell calmed down; the sun came out, and we again caught more than 500 fish in two days. This year we’ve been fishing in a little deeper water (90–100 feet) in order to tag fish in different areas and look for tagged fish that may have moved to deeper water. As a result, the species composition of the catch has been different. Last year, black rockfish dominated the catch at 70% of the total catch, compared with 30% this year. This year, we’ve caught a lot more canary rockfish and small yellowtail rockfish (20–25 cm long) fishing over this deeper habitat.

Species Caught in June and July 2006 Number Percent of total
Black Rockfish 337 30.1
Canary Rockfish 220 19.6
Blue Rockfish 152 13.6
Brown Rockfish 100 8.9
Lingcod Rockfish 98 8.8
Olive/Yellowtail Rockfish 93 8.3
Vermillion Rockfish 34 3.0
Gopher Rockfish 29 2.6
Yellowtail Rockfish 24 2.1
Kelp Greenling 11 1.0
Copper Rockfish 9 0.8
China Rockfish 6 0.5
Olive Rockfish 2 0.2
Spiny Dogfish Shark 2 0.2
Cabezon 1 0.1
Total 1118 100.0

Species composition is recorded in the
table to the left.

And her recap of 2005:

Anglers returned 170 tags from fish recaptured since the Duxbury Reef tagging study began in June 2005. Whereas most of these fish were recaptured within a mile or two of release location, a few traveled great distances. One of these “wanderers” was a black rockfish caught near Crescent City, California by a commercial live-fish fisherman 11 months and 15 days after it was released and 360 nautical miles from where it was tagged. Last month, a 37 cm vermilion rockfish was caught near Bodega Bay 11 months and 28 days after it was released and 60 nm from Duxbury Reef. However, the record for distance traveled goes to a black rockfish caught near Newport, Oregon, almost 600 nm from where it was tagged and released! It was at liberty for more than a year before it was recaptured.