Part 2

In the autumn issue David Hall provided some background on his involvement in the worldwide gamefish tagging program. The story continues…

It is well documented now throughout the western world, including Australia, that the rate at which fish are released by anglers has steadily increased over the last two decades or so. With this we have seen an escalation in interest from recreational fishers in contributing to the scientific effort by not only reporting the recapture of tagged fish, but also in actively tagging the fish that are being released.

In SA there have been two major programs involved in recreational (volunteer) tag and release. The primary program is the SAFTAG program, which is a component of the ANSA national

AUSTAG (now Fishtag Australia) program. This program was run for many years by my dear friend Marcel Vandergoot until his sad passing in 2020. It is now run by Mick Wilson and Levi Nash on a strictly volunteer and cost recovery basis. The ANSA web site provides contact details for those interested in finding out more and potentially becoming involved in the program. The primary and preferred way of becoming involved is to join an ANSA Club first. If, however, you do not wish to join an ANSA club, but wish to go tagging, you can join RecFishSA as a Citizen Science member, which also provides you with an ANSA membership.

There is a list of mostly inshore and inland target species, including mulloway, black bream, yellowtail kingfish, King George whiting, golden perch and (in season) Murray cod among others that will be explained upon joining.

Snapper cannot be tagged during the current fishery closures, but prior to this there was a significant number of snapper tagged by volunteers, including by yours truly, in my case out from Victor Harbor in the early-mid 2010s when I lived there. Among other things, this complemented research projects undertaken during the 1980s by the Department of Fisheries supervised by myself, including one memorable very long night session off Whyalla with SA Angler co-founder Shane Mensforth in which, from memory, over 80 large snapper were tagged!