Advances in Tagging and Marking Technologies for Fisheries Management and Research

Measurement is the key component in most investigations of fish and shellfish. The ability to identify individual and groups of fishes, their habits, movements, and mortality, is crucial to effective fisheries science. The methods used must be appropriate, accurate, and repeatable. While uncertainty is an integral part of dealing with biological systems, as scientists it is crucial that we use methods that minimize uncertainty in order to improve the conservation and sustainability of fisheries and aquatic resources.

Gathering Again…

In June of 1988, over 400 fisheries and aquatic scientists gathered in Seattle, Washington, USA, for the International Symposium and Educational Workshop on Fish-Marking Techniques. This landmark event included presentations on virtually every fish tagging method in use at that time. The ultimate product was the publishing in 1990 of Fish Marking Techniques, American Fisheries Society Symposium 7, arguably one of the most influential fisheries publications in decades.

The proceedings of this new Symposium will provide the next step beyond Fish Marking Techniques, and the proceedings from the Australian Society for Fish Biology Tagging Workshop in 1988 and Workshop on Fish Movement and Migration in 1999, into this century’s methods, technologies, advances, and challenges.

Fish marking technologies on the cutting edge two decades ago are now commonplace, and new technologies are developed yearly. Clearly, the time has come to bring together again global expertise on fish tagging techniques and interpretation of movement data, with presentations on satellite and data logging tags, acoustic and radio telemetry, new methods utilizing traditional internal and external tags, chemical and genetic marks, approaches that integrate two or more of these techniques, and innovative data analysis techniques. It is the hope that discussions held at this symposium will be the impetus for even greater advances in tagging for fisheries science.

This Symposium is a collaborative effort of the American Fisheries Society, the Australian Society for Fish Biology, and the New Zealand Marine Sciences Society.