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Gareth Lee Jordaan
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Summary
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ORI-CFTP Tagging Officer
South African Association For Marine Biological Research (SAAMBR)
February 2014
Oceanographic Research Institute
I am the Tagging Officer for the Oceanographic Research Institute Cooperative Fish Tagging Project (ORI-CFTP). The ORI Tagging Project has been running for over 30 years with about 6000 active taggers. In total there have been about 320 000 fish that have been tagged (with 25 000 recaptures) in South African coastal waters, including Mozambique and Namibia to a lesser extent. Although the tagging project involvess the cooperation of voluntary members and the marine angling public (through citizen science), the tagging of fish is still a science with the primary aims of learning more about fish movement patterns, growth rates, mortality rates and population dynamics of important linefish species. This information is extremely valuable and is used by scientists and managers around South Africa to enable more effective management and sustainable use of the countries linefish. Tagging efforts are focused on priority species and the best available tagging equipment is used. Much focus is placed on the capture and handling of fish to ensure their greatest chance of survival.