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Current Cruise: TC-01-03 Pop up Satellite
Archival Tagging of Swordfish, Shark, and Tuna March 23- April 16, 2001
The Townsend Cromwell is steaming south to Cross Seamount. We were about 500 hundred miles north of the Hawaiian Islands but
a gale began to develop around us. We have been cruising south for three days just to avoid the bad weather.
Unfortunately, the forecast for the Cross Seamount area is not much better.
The good news is that our
longlining effort went so well up north that we tagged all of the swordfish
and female sharks that we needed to. We are now going
to concentrate on tagging male sharks and tuna. When longlining, we don't have much control over what we catch.
Changing location, the time of day that we set and retrieve, and changing the depth that the hooks fish can target
or exclude different species to some extent. We set the longline at night so that we don't catch seabirds as the
hooks go out. We fish shallow (about 30 meters) so that we will catch sharks.
At Cross Seamount we will
handline during the day and longline at night. Handline fishing is done with the ship drifting with the wind and
currents. We throw chum out to lure the fish in and throw hand held fishing lines in the
water. Chum is chopped
up bait that spreads the scent or flavor of food out into the surrounding water in an attempt to lure fish and
start a feeding frenzy. Hand caught fish are usually more lively and therefore better for tagging.
Other updates from this cruise:
April 6 April 12
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