White Marlin Open Day 3

The White Marlin Open and other tournaments held each summer in this region are taking advantage of the North Atlantic white marlin's use of this area as its primary summer through fall feeding ground. A chart showing where US longliners reported the greatest concentration of white marlin catches during July-Sept of 1994 is presented here: [url]www.BigMarineFish.com/wmarlin94-3ss.gif[/url]. After spawning throughout May in the gaps between the larger Caribbean islands, the adults congregate primarily in a band near the edge of the Continental Shelf between Cape Hatteras and (formerly) the tip of Georges Bank. (With its population having been reduced by overfishing due to longlines to about 2% of its former "unfished" 1960 abundance, its summer feeding range has shrunk southward - now Hatteras to the Hudson Canyon.) As can be seen, a second but less importat summer feeding ground is in the northern Gulf of Mexico.

With its population in such trouble, the feeding ground off the mid-Atlantic states is the white marlin's last refuge. They will continue to show up here from summer through fall until the last one is gone. Great sport fishing success during this tournament or others here is thus not a sign of a healthy populaton. At its current rate of decline, extinction should occur about 2017 (the North Atlantic blue marlin is on a trajectory to reach extinction at about the same time). A few individual fish may survive beyond this date, but there will be too few to find each other for spawning and thus to repopulate and save the two species. For more on this subject see [url]www.BigMarineFish.com/marlin.html[/url]