By Gordon Goldie
With the higher than normal winds curtailing a lot of boat fishing pretty much since the Tagathon event in November, I’d been dying to get back up to my boat at Loch Sunart for a couple of days to see what was about. As always, I’d been watching the weather forecast for days beforehand and it was looking good for the weekend with SE winds below 10mph for both days. Billy McCormack was to be my crew mate and we were joined for Saturday by Darren, Paul and …

In part 2 of the “History of Tagging” segment we look at the development and use of electronic tags.
The development of electronic tags opened up a wide range of new possibilities and allowed more detailed behavioural studies on short-term movements, migrations, diving behaviour and habitat use. Sharks in particular were identified as strong candidates for electronic tagging programmes due to their size, robustness and the toughness of their skin allowing external tags to be firmly anchored. To date electronic tags have been used to monitor the behaviour of many species …

In this segment we will cover the history of fish tagging from its origins in the early 1600’s up to modern day shark tagging projects. For centuries humans have tried to develop non-destructive ways of monitoring the movements and dynamics of fish populations largely for the purpose of fisheries management, it was this need that drove the development of tagging early projects. Nowadays tagging projects operate worldwide in order to provide data for fisheries management and conservation.
In part 1 of this segment we will discuss the origins of fish tagging …

Recently, some anglers have reported ‘sores’ at tag sites on recaptured Common Skate. Below we explain the impact that tagging has to the body of an elasmobranch in order to explain that these ‘sores’ are formed from scar tissue as an auto immune response from the fish.
As tagging is a popular method for studying shark and skate species, there has been a lot of research into the effects of tags on elasmobranchs. Below is a synopsis from a piece of research work into this area.
In a study by Heupel & …

The waters around the UK are regularly visited by up to twenty one different species of Shark throughout the year.
The Supreme Apex Predator:
Sharks have been around for over three hundred million years; The modern shark are highly evolved and have been unchanged for over one hundred million years. Human beings on the other hand have been around for little over one hundred thousand years and we are still evolving. Sharks are fish, and have little or no bone what-so-ever. Their skeleton consists of cartilage, similar to the top part …

Sharks are really fascinating creatures! Feared by mankind for their fierce eating habits and their vicious look, but still are we so intrigued by this majestic creature. The following are a few interesting things about sharks you may not know -

There are more than 360 shark species.
Sharks don’t always bite, just sometimes. Unlike humans sharks can not eat continuously in a row, so most often they bite to determine if the object is worth their digestive time. If they’ve bitten it and don’t think it is worth their while they …

Sharks are one of the nature’s greatest predator and highly intelligent species, they have a social hierarchy system, possess problem-solving skills and are curious by nature.
A sharks sense of smell and sight is keen, it can both spot a one part per million of blood in seawater and can hear prey that is mile away. They also possesses electro receptor organs called Ampullae of Lorenzini which give them the greatest electrical sensitivity in all of the animal kingdom and help them find hidden prey.
Sharks are …