Mr Martin Exel the Chairman of COLTO congratulates Mr TeaBin Jung of SunWoo fisheries, representing the Korean vessel, Kostar, the first winner of the COLTO-sponsored CCAMLR tag-return lottery. The tag number was drawn at random from all reports of recaptured toothfish in CCAMLR exploratory fisheries in 2012/13.
The lottery had cash prizes for crew that had returned the three randomly drawn tags ($400 for first prize, $350 for second prize, and $250 for the third prize).
The winning tagged Antarctic toothfish was recaptured by Ahmad Dulkalim on the Sunstar on 31 January 2013 in the Amundsen Sea (Subarea 88.2) having been tagged by Roberto Bello on a Uruguayan vessel, the Viking Sur, on 13 February 2007 in same area.
Martin and Taebin are flanked by runners-up Jack Fenaughty (left – second prize) and Andre Petrov (right – third prize) representing the vessels San Aspiring from New Zealand, and Palmer from Russia, respectively.
Details of where the fish were first tagged, and then recovered, are held by the CCAMLR Secretariat.
To date, over 150,000 toothfish have been tagged and released as part of a broad program of fisheries research in CCAMLR waters, helping to improve scientific knowledge of the stocks, and biological characteristics of the fish.
Tagging and Recapture details of the three fish:
First Prize – Tag Number Viking Sur 9622 was recaptured by Ahmad Dulkalim (crewman) on Sunstar (KOR) on 31/1/13 in Subarea 88.2. It was tagged by Roberto Bello (CHL) on Viking Sur (URY) on 13/2/07 in Subarea 88.2. This was a male Antarctic toothfish, he was 104cm when tagged and 110cm when recaptured, although there was 2,180 days between tagging and recapture, the distance between those two locations was only 5 nm.
Second Prize – Tag number A124037/38 was recaptured by recaptured by ‘Dillon’ on San Aspiring (NZL) on 23/1/13 in Subarea 88.1. It was tagged by ‘crew’ on Antarctic Chieftain (NZL) on 3/1/09 in Subarea 88.1. This was a male Antarctic toothfish, he was 84cm when tagged and 101cm when recaptured 1,481 days later. The distance between the tagging and recapture locations was 46.5 nm.
Third prize – Tag number A195208/09 was recaptured by Sergey Usachev (UKR) or Aleksei Popov (RUS) on Palmer (RUS) on 19/1/13 in Subarea 88.2. It was tagged by Mykola Kukharyev (UKR) on Sparta (RUS) on 22/1/11 in Subarea 88.2. This was also a male Antarctic toothfish, he was 133cm when tagged and 143cm when recaptured 728 days later, the distance between the tagging and recapture locations was 10 nm.
As you can see toothfish generally don’t appear to move too far, however, as fisheries tends to operate in similar areas each year this does mean that we are more likely to recapture fish that have not moved very far.
