I thought that it might be exciting for our readers to provide an angler’s perspective on the fishing and tag deployment experience off Greymouth, New Zealand.  I received the following email from angler, Tom Thomson, who is featured within my birthday bluefin blog in this series, regarding our trip on August 27 - 28, 2008. - George Shillinger

After two intensive weeks of fishing, the 2008 bluefin tuna satellite tagging program had made good strides towards the goal of deploying 25 pop-up satellite tags.  Although New Zealand’s winter weather hasn’t been great this season, we’ve managed to tag 21 bluefin by the end of August. 

George Shillinger reports on a birthday outing with the Cerveza 2:

Following four back-to back runs on three different vessels, I was craving some rest but anxious to finish the tagging work with our team in Greymouth. I had already extended my trip and could not afford to stay any longer. 

Pete Saul reports on his back to back trip on Cova Rose. It was a quick turn-around with only a few hours ashore. The charter was three enthusiastic south Australians who wanted to land a fish only if it was a potential world record.

Although it was difficult to leave my colleagues and the crew behind on the Cova Rose, it was exciting to board the Cerveza 2 again and to rejoin Captain Larry Johnston, his crew, and the Greymouth Guzzlers (4Gs).

Hopes were high for a successful conclusion of the pop-up satellite tagging in the second week. To maximize our tag deployment efforts, George Shillinger (see his blogs #3 and 5) transferred to the Cerveza 2, leaving Pete, Tim, and John to continue with working with the Cova Rose. As both teams prepared to depart, the weather had cleared again allowing the boats to leave the port of Greymouth on schedule.

The 2008 New Zealand Pacific bluefin satellite tagging effort is underway. I reunited with Pete Saul and colleagues, John Holdsworth (Bluewater Marine Research) and Tim Sippel (Auckland University) in Greymouth on August 16, 2008 for another shot at tagging the giant tuna off the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island.

We were able to get the final 15 archival tags out on small bluefin tuna on Saturday morning, and we topped off the live wells so that 15 fish were aboard swimming in circles below deck. At this point we have archival tagged 112 Pacific bluefin in the past week, and collected 30 live fish for the Tuna Research and Conservation Center. We’ve also placed 7 archival tags in albacore (we stopped tagging albies when I realized how many bluefin were around). This total puts our team at a total of about 550 electronic tags on Pacific bluefin.

Epic. Remarkable. Inspiring. Those are words to describe today, Friday, July 11th aboard the F/V Shogun. I’ve not experienced a day fishing and tagging Pacific bluefin like this since early August of 2002. It's the same place and same ocean, but a long time has passed since the bluefin were biting like this. It is a day you live for as an angler- and as a tuna scientist- the fun of such great action keeps you enthusiastic about what we’re doing forever.

We came in with our full load of bluefin, but unlike years past where we usually unload at Scripps dock, we came right in to Fisherman's Landing. Here Norm pulled the Shogun in as close as he could, and we unloaded each fish individually from the well in a sling of water. The hard part was that we had to walk, and run the fish- 400 feet up a ramp- across the dock- and down a sidewalk to get to the Tunabago truck, that has been built specifically for transporting fish.