During the 2009 year, we continued with research activity on tuna biology by means of development of a tagging cooperation framework between the Spanish Confederation of Responsible Maritime Recreational Fishing and the Spanish Institute of Oceanography. Ten events of catch, tag, and release were carried out at eight different harbours, involving a total of 106 recreational boats. In total, 223 bluefin tunas (Thunnus thynnus) and 178 albacore (Thunnus alalunga) samples were tagged together with other different species. Conventional spaghetti ICCAT type tag and internal pop-up satellite archival tags were put with the collaboration WWF-Adena and the University of Cadiz. The organization of catch, tag and release events in recreational fisheries could be relevant scenarios for biological research, particularly in areas and /or time periods for which access to the information is not available from the commercial fisheries.

Sí