The Great Marlin Race

Congratulations go to the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, sponsors of the tag on Fish #1, which won the 2010 Great Marlin Race by traveling 2,282 nautical miles east-southeast of Kona over the course of 120 days.  This 150 lb. marlin was caught by Angler Kerry Kurz of the Laguna Niguel Billfish Club #1 on August 3, 2010, and tagged by his brother Bob Kurz, both on board the Sea Baby III with Captain Doug Pattengill and crewman A.J. Friend.

The data transmitted from the tag suggest that this marlin began its journey by heading almost due south of Hawaii for the first month following its release, to a point about 750 nautical miles south of the islands.  It then turned east, meandering along the 10-degree latitude line across over 2,000 nautical miles before reaching the point at which its tag released and floated to the surface.  Click here to see the interactive map, where you can see where each fish was at any time during the Race.

Final map with the results of the 2010 Great Marlin Race, colored by individual.  The tag on Fish 1 popped up 2,282 nautical miles from where it was deployed, 120 days earlier.

On the whole, the results from the 2010 Great Marlin Race are fascinating in that they reveal such a great diversity of migratory behaviors.  With nine out of ten tags having successfully reported, we observed one marlin that went south-southwest and another that went due east – and the others all fell somewhere in between.  This year we even had two marlin that appeared to stay right near the Hawaiian Islands – one of them for the entire 120-day deployment period!  

These findings, and the comparison they offer to the results from 2009, illustrate how important it is to tag as many marlin as possible, and to repeat this process over multiple years.  For with so much variability from individual to individual and year to year, it is impossible with just a few isolated tracks to begin to understand the broader migration patterns of these fish and the external forces that shape their behavior.