Summary of Trips

There were no reports made during the months of December, January, or February. However, compilation of a reef database was begun and turned in during the January period, and one trip was made during February to the Harrison County Barges in FH-4, and FH-5, but they were not located so no work was performed. Also fish tagging statistics and a year end recap was compiled for the annual DrawDown held on March 20. This past month one trip was made on April 6 to one of the concrete Module reefs in the Bill Walker Site (FH-2) to conduct routine observations.

FH-2 Modules 33 & 34 (#55)

Modules 33 & 34 are located in the southwest corner of FH-2 and are identified as #55 on the orientation sheet. The loran coordinates are 12423.8, 47043.4, and 29598.8. They were sunk in November of 1989 in about 55 feet of water. Neither module is intact, but instead are busted up and scattered across the bottom. Some of the walls are cantilevered over broken peices of concreted providing excellent habitat for den seeking marine life. The overall function of the reef was excellent as evidenced by the great abundance of life. The three plus years of marine growth on the concrete is about one half inch thick and continues to thrive and mature. There were sightings of many sea urchins as well as as few gastropods such as murexes and horse conchs. One horse conch measured 16 inches long and nearly 7 inches wide. Fish sightings revealed the usual abundance of sheepshead for this time of year. Red Snapper were abundant as usual, but there were only a few spade fish seen and the number of Trigger fish were under par. Visibility was poor yielding only about 5-7 feet at the bottom. The mid-water visibility was about 30 feet and surface visibility was only about 10 feet. This may have hampered some of the observations. The sightings are summarized below in Table One.

There was no evidence of deterioration as one would expect of concrete. Even protruding reinforcement bars were still intact. Also there was no evidence of scouring and very little oversedimentation into this relatively hard bottom.

Some numbers were crunched out on our present tagging program for our annual drawdown program. To summarize them, we have tagged about 3400 fish over the course of about three years. Of the fish tagged, 93.5% were red snapper, 3% were cobia, 0.8% were grouper, 0.7% were amberjack, and the remaing 2% were various other species such as kings, jacks, dolphin, bluefish, triggers, black snapper, beeliners, etc. The return rate has been about 5% (171 fish). Six fish were recaptured twice and one was recaptured three times. The shortest time from release to recapture was 3 hours and the longest was 491 days. The size of the red snapper tagged ranged from 3.1 inches to 19.7 inches with an average of about 13 inches. The total growth of these fish ranged from -0.8" to 7.5" with an average of 1.35 inches. After discarding obviously bad data and looking only at fish that had at least a month at liberty before being recaptured, we saw an average growth rate of 0.44 inch per month. Also evident was the highly resident nature of red snapper. It was extremely rare to get a recapture reported at a different location than released on. Only four of the 171 reports may possibly have moved to a different site, but these could not be confirmed. There were a couple of confirmed reports were

History

Tagging began in Summer of 1989 with Fish Trackers, Inc.

Earliest Records Started on August 21, 1989.

Began recording taggings on March 25, 1990.

Began using our own Tags without phone number on April 22, 1990.

Began using our own Tags with phone number on June 16, 1990.

Number Tagged and Returned

Total Records to Date: 3,383

Total Returns to Date: 171 (5.1%) Number of Fish recaptured twice: 6

YEAR TAGGED RECAPS %RETURN Species Breakdown

1990 999 39 4.8% 3,164 Red Snapper - 93.5%

1991 1226 36 2.9% 102 Cobia - 3.0%

1992 968 67 6.9% 27 Grouper - 0.8%

1993 189 14 7.4% 25 Amberjack - 0.7%

91-93 2383 117 4.9% 11 Kings - 0.3%

53 Others - 1.6%

Size Range (Red Snapper Only) Days at Liberty (all Fish)

Size range of initial tagging: 3.1" to 19.7" Range: 3 Hours to 491 Days

Size range of recaptures: 9.5" to 20.5" AVG: 101.35 Days

Average Tagged Size = 13.09" Half were less than 65 Days

Average Recaptured Size = 13.56"

Average 2nd Recapture Size = 15.1"

GROWTH

Total growth length range: -0.8" to 7.5" AVG: 1.35"

Monthly growth rate range: -0.75" to 8.67" per month

Monthly growth rate average: 0.53 inches per month

Monthly growth rate average for Red Snapper only, rates between 0 and 1 inches per month and over 30 days at liberty: 0.44 inches per month.

Movement

Almost all Red Snapper recaptures were on the exact same structure originally released on. There are four possible reports where the fish may have moved to new sites. There are three other reports where the fished moved to nearby reefs (within 100-200 yards away).