Tagging key for conservation
PERHAPS the most dramatic change over the past 50 years of game fishing in the region has been an almost complete reversal of fishing practices.
Whereas in the past, caught marlin were killed and taken home, nowadays 99.5 per cent of black marlin are released back in the water alive and tagged to assist in scientific research.
In fact, the first game fish tagged in Australia was a black marlin off the coast of Cairns in 1968.
Considering Captain George Bransford and Richard Obach’s historic catch occurred only two years earlier in 1966, the conservation efforts within the industry go back to almost the very beginning, with more than 2000 marlin tagged and released between 1968-1975.
Australia launched it’s own tagging program in 1973, after wellknown game fisher Peter Goadby and former Game Fishing Association Australia president, John O’Brien, approached New South Wales Fisheries with the idea.
In 1977, independent marine biologist Dr Julian Pepperell visited Cairns and met with Daphne Nielsen to organise the handover of tagging in the region to NSW Fisheries from the previously-used US program.
Dr Pepperell says that since then more than 63,000 black marlin have been tagged in Australian waters, with almost half of those tagged in the waters between Cairns and Lizard Island.
The data collected through tagging has shown that Cairns’ black marlin fishery is sustainable, and has been for the past 50 years, he says.
“There has been peaks and troughs during this time, but over the years the graph is remarkably consistent.
“The region’s charter fishery has always been extremely cooperative in assisting research activities by offering to help at all levels.”
Cairns Game Fishing Commemorative Association secretary Captain Laurie Wright says he has “personally tagged thousands of marlins” over the years.
He says the tag and release program has been incredibly successful.
“Since its inception, tens of thousands of black marlin have been tagged. It has given us so much knowledge on the species and has confirmed the black marlin is a healthy, viable species,” he says.
The intentional switch to a general release policy and the promotion of ethical, sustainable game fishing has helped the nonfishing community understand the long-term conservation and environmental efforts of the industry.