Sat-Tagged Tripers: A New Year’s Call For Support - The Fisherman

Sat-Tagged Tripers: A New Year’s Call For Support

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The Wakefield boys, Joel, Seth, Lee and Greg, with Capt. Clinton Lessard of Sho Nuf Sportfishing/Charters kneeling in front, with one of two sat-tagged stripers off Sandy Hook, NJ on October 28, 2024. Photo by Chuck Many.

Join the Northeast Striped Bass Study team in 2025!

Fisheries managers often tout striped bass as the most thoroughly researched fishery in the entire management world.  In fact, few fish species in America today have their very own federal conservation law (Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act of 1984), and even fewer have seen a presidential executive order of protection (Executive Order 13449) as enacted by President George W. Bush in 2007, prohibiting the commercial harvest and sale of striped bass, and redfish, in federal waters.

But if the striped bass management chaos of the past 4 years has told us anything it’s that we need more data and better science if we’re to fish sustainably on striped bass through the next 4 years along the rebuilding timeline for this iconic fishery.  And no matter which side of the recent striper debate you find yourself – whether you supported immediate action to curtail harvest, or felt regulatory action in 2025 was not yet warranted – I’d like to think that we all want to see more science dedicated to striped bass.  Better understanding of the state of the Chesapeake Bay as the Atlantic Coast’s primary nursery grounds for striped bass for example, or perhaps it’s a marked improvement on recreational data collection.

Bottom line, our federal government (NOAA Fisheries) and the management bodies (Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, or ASMFC) responsible for the sustainability of striped bass should be leaving no stone unturned when it comes to better understanding of this iconic species.  Yet rather ironically, we’ve run face-first into a stonewall of sorts in terms of support and/or acknowledgement from certain segments of the management community for the past 6 years of tagging data through our Northeast Striped Bass Study.

That “stonewall” is a story for another day.  But it’s a new year, and for some of us, it’s beginning to get personal!

JS-Bass-No-H
The 49-inch striper named JS Bass #No H was caught by PENN’s Justin Poe aboard Capt. Dave Shunke’s Fish Circus on May 16, 2024 during StriperQuest ’24; according to the temperature, depth, and light data compiled inside the MiniPAT device, this jumbo striper spent much of the summer in federal waters, including the area known as Nantucket Shoals.

7-Year Anniversary

The Northeast Striped Bass Study is something started by our friends at Gray Fishtag Research alongside a team from The Fisherman in the spring of 2019 through a series of tagging expeditions using pop-up satellite archival tags.  That first season we deployed two high-tech pop-up tags in striped bass in the lower Hudson River in May.  Designed by the Washington-based Wildlife Computers, the MiniPAT devices are a sophisticated combination of archival and Argos satellite technology designed to track the large-scale movements and behavior of fish that do not spend enough time at the surface to allow the use of real-time Argos satellite tags.

Sensor data is collected during deployment and archived in onboard memory, compiling hourly temperature, pressure, and light data while on the fish. Once the tag pops off – ideally at a pre-programmed date set by our research team at Wildlife Computers and Gray Fishtag Research – it will float to the surface and relay daily summaries of the stored data via Argos Satellites back to Gray Fishtag Research.  A wet/dry sensor in the tag itself trips the battery inside to turn on at the surface to trigger the tag’s uploading of information to the Argos Satellite passing overhead.

The most common form of fish tagging involves what are referred to as “spaghetti” or “streamer” tags which are slender, brightly-colored plastic tags inserted into a fish at the time of capture, with basic information like fish length and catch location denoted by the angler.  Once that tag information is logged and entered into a database, any time that fish is caught again in the future and hopefully reported back to the tagging source (Gray Fishtag Research or American Littoral Society, for example), the information can be compared against the original tag and release information to determine such things as growth and migration by straight-line distance, point A and point B.

Streamer tag recaptures provide valuable information in terms of “time at sea” or time between initial capture and recapture.  Missing from this data set however is what actually happens with the fish in the time in between point A and B, where it has traveled and how far.  One method to fill the gaps is through the use of acoustic telemetry.  As detailed in his September 2024 article in The Fisherman (Unblinded By Science: Gliders, Biotelemetry & Striper DNA) Monmouth University researcher John Tiedemann described acoustic telemetry research as consisting of two main pieces of equipment, transmitters and receivers.  “Transmitters are electronic tags that are typically surgically implanted in fish.  Each transmitter emits a unique series of sound pulses (pings) that is heard by underwater receivers making it possible to identify individual fish.”

Basically, a striped bass carrying an acoustic transmitter would need to pass in close proximity to an underwater receiver to detect the sound signal of a tagged fish, decode that signal, and then log pertinent information.  “By deploying a network or array of receivers ‘in the field’ scientists can compile data that allows them to track a fish’s movement as well as show the amount of time a fish spends in a particular area,” Tiedemann noted.

The one drawback to acoustic telemetry is the fact that a fish’s transmitter must come in close enough proximity to the receiver to make a connection.  This why many researchers around the world are using a suite of tracking mechanisms which include streamer tags, acoustic tags and pop-up archival tags like those created by Wildlife Computers and used in the Northeast Striped Bass Study.   In fact, in October of 2023 a team of researchers led by Dr. Steven Zottoli and Scott Bennett launched their Striped Bass Initiative (stripedbassmagic.org) using satellite pop-up tags manufactured by Wildlife Computers to research “the biology, behavior, and seasonal migrations of unique populations of striped bass on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard.”

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Long Island surfcaster Brian Miller deployed the first ever surf-caught satellite tag of the Northeast Striped Bass Study during the ’24 fall run, a fish named Pure Fishing.

’25 Status Report

Since our first tagging expedition in May of 2019, our Northeast Striped Bass Study team has deployed a total of 32 pop-up satellite archival tags; that’s 32 striped bass over 6 years that have logged temperature, depth and light data during an extended timeframe of migration along the Atlantic Coast.  A total of 27 pop-up tags actually transmitted data to the Argos satellite and ultimately to Gray Fishtag Research for analysis, with 16 MiniPAT devices found and physically returned to Wildlife Computers for a full analysis.

Our most recent tag return is from a 49-inch striper caught aboard Capt. Dave Shunke’s Fish Circus during our annual StriperQuest event out of North Jersey on May 16, 2024.  That fish/tag named JS Bass #No H was caught by PENN’s Justin Poe and seemed to follow a pattern that was very similar to our sat-tagged spring stripers in years past, spending most of the month just off the Jersey Shore beaches before following what appears to be the Hudson Trench, sliding to the northeast well offshore in the NY Bight, before settling down for much of the summer in the Nantucket Shoals area.

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A pop-up satellite archival tag or MiniPAT developed by Wildlife Computer is a sophisticated combination of archival and Argos satellite technology used by fisheries researchers worldwide.

In the November, 2022 edition of The Fisherman I provided an update on our Northeast Striped Bass Study in an article titled Nantucket Shoals: Whales, Doormats & Jumbo Stripers, detailing how jumbo fluke, the North Atlantic right whale, and now striped bass are all competing for attention of sorts, along with industrial offshore wind development, in this Nantucket Shoals area.  As referenced in that article, the United States Coast Pilot distributed annually by the Office of Coast Survey describes the Nantucket Shoals as extending eastward from Nantucket, MA for 23 miles and southeastward for over 40 miles.  In a recent Northeast Striped Bass Study planning session for 2025, Gray Fishtag Research’s tagging director Roxanne Willmer put it best when she said “we really need to plan a deployment next year at this location.”

We’re still awaiting results from other pop-up devices deployed in 2024.  Two other two tags affixed to jumbo stripers during StriperQuest ’24 included Manhattan Cup and Yo- Zuri which released and were both physically located.  “These tags will be processed at Wildlife Computers for the complete data set to be shared,” Willmer said, noting also how Caterpillar Marine is one more fish/tag deployed last spring that we’re hoping will return results.  Expect to see more in our March edition of The Fisherman.

JOIN OUR SAT-TAG TEAM!

We have tentatively set the date of StriperQuest ’25 as May 15th out of the Atlantic Highlands, Highlands region of New Jersey along the Raritan Bayshore.  Once again this season we will be opening up this event to members of the public with a day of striper tagging and competition.  Mark your calendars now and plan to join us as we continue to grow this extraordinary event (more details to follow as the date approaches).  If you believe that gathering more data about the striped bass migration is important, then we hope you come aboard with us in 2025.

Major sponsors of the ongoing Northeast Striped Bass Study partnership with Gray Fishtag Research and The Fisherman Magazine in 2025 include American Fishing Wiring (AFW), Berkeley Striper Club, Caterpillar Marine, Fin-Nor, the Fisheries Conservation Trust, Hudson River Fishermen’s Association, LBI Surf Fishing Classic, the Many, Glassberg and Nova families, Montauk Surfcasters Association, New York Sportfishing Federation, PENN, Raritan Bay Anglers Club, Ross Brewery, Seaguar, Simrad, Southernmost Apparel, Yo-Zuri, and Van Staal. For $25 tax-deductible charitable donation to Gray Fishtag Research, you too can become a Northeast Striped Bass Supporter and receive a custom decal from marine artist Carey Chen.  For more information contact Roxanne Willmer at 844-824-8353 or Roxanne@grayfishtag.org or go to grayfishtag.org.

Striped Bass Study

Three more MiniPAT devices were deployed during the fall run, two in late October by Northeast Striped Bass Study supporter Chuck Many while fishing with the Wakefield brothers of New Jersey.  We also broke new ground in the fall when Long Island surfcaster Brian Miller deployed the very first MiniPAT device into a surf-caught striper, a 38-incher from Westhampton Beach, NY.  “The data collected from this surf-tagging project will enhance our understanding of striped bass migration and behavior, critical information that shapes conservation strategies,” Miller later noted.

That Westhampton stretch of Eastern Long Island is actually a special place for all of us involved in the Northeast Striped Bass Study.  As reported by The Fisherman’s Matt Broderick in a July, 2022 article titled The Research Continues: 2022 Striped Bass Tagging, Westhampton Beach is where he and publisher Mike Caruso found a MiniPAT device after tracking the GPS coordinates through Gray Fishtag Research.  “That tag – fixed to a 44-inch striped bass named Hail Mary – was deployed on June 17 aboard Chuck Many’s Tyman off Romer Shoal in Raritan Bay,” wrote Broderick.

“The fact that I found the tag from a fish caught by Lee Wakefield, who just so happens to be a friend of mine, makes the connection for me even more personal,” he added.

Indeed, when it comes to striped bass management in recent years, things have gotten very personal.  That’s why we’re expanding the scope of our Northeast Striped Bass Study this season, incorporating a new MicroPAT device to track striped bass under the 30-inch class, while making a dedicated push to researchers and fisheries managers to encourage review of any and all of the striped bass data collected through Gray Fishtag Research since 2019.

Our personal pledge as a team is to provide “open access” to key researchers looking for additional data for a better understanding of striped bass.

More to come!

Related

Personal Striper Notes: Migration Patterns, Timing & Size Class

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Striper Quest ‘24: A Day Of Tagging & New Findings

A late ’23 return as we kick off a new season of striper tagging. 

‘23 Numbers Are In: Northeast Striped Bass Study

A Sat tag deployed in May returns after another summer at the Shoals.