Fish & Water - Sounds Wild
Black Cod Reward

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Black Cod Reward

A couple friends are fishing for halibut in Chatham Strait of Southeast Alaska and they catch a nice black cod. Black cod, also known as sablefish, are prized for their rich, oily meat and are a delicacy when smoked. This fish makes these anglers doubly happy, because it's also been tagged with a small orange plastic tag in its dorsal fin.

Almost 10,000 sablefish were caught, tagged and released in Southeast waters by biologists in the spring of 2018. Commercial and sport fishermen who catch a tagged sablefish and return the tag to a Fish and Game office are rewarded with a tee-shirt and a possible cash prize - incentives for the public to contribute to sablefish monitoring and research.

The sablefish are caught using pots, strung on a longline. Tagged fish are measured and released, and then mix with the general population of sablefish in the area. Comparing the numbers of recaptured fish to the original number of marked fish allows biologists to determine a population estimate (a method known as mark/recapture). Looking at the locations helps biologists understand sablefish movements, and comparing the measurements provides growth data.

In past years surveyors have tagged between 6,000 and 8,000 fish. The program is getting good results - In 2017, 782 tags were returned.