KAILUA-KONA -- This is one place where you'll never fail to run into a fish tale or two, especially during the Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament. Tag, release
program catching onThis year's HIBT -- the 39th annual fishathon -- is no exception.
The week-long competition began yesterday with 53 teams representing 14 countries chasing the prized Pacific blue marlin. Oh, ahi's also delectable but it's only a serendipitous catch. They don't count in the point standings for the team championship, only on the sashimi market.
The primary focus of the billfish tournament isn't the number or the size of the marlin caught, although HIBT founder Peter Fithian wouldn't mind seeing the tournament's world record -- a 1,116-pounder caught on a 50-pound test line in 1993 -- broken this week.
Rather, it's T&R, a tag-and-release program initiated in 1986 to conserve the Pacific blue marlin.
This is a fishing tournament in which anglers don't necessarily care to show off their catch, especially if they don't meet the minimum weight requirement.
MORE than 80 percent of the marlin caught since the program started were tagged and released. In the last two years, only 19 marlin were brought ashore to be weighed, while 133 were released at sea.
Yesterday's first day was no exception. Sixteen were caught, and 13 tagged and released. The response to the T&R program has been gratifying, according to Australian Peter Goadby, the HIBT's chief judge, who first came here to fish in the 1965 HIBT.
So you won't see any save-the-marlin activists picketing at the pier.
Of course, this is still a fishing tournament -- the best in the world, according to Albert Glassell Jr., an 85-year-old Texas oil executive who was this year's grand marshal of Sunday's two-hour parade through this seaside town.
So a point system was devised where a team gets bonus points for tagging and releasing a marlin. Any brought in weighing less than 200 pounds doesn't get a point while one that is tagged and released, no matter the size, is worth 300 points if caught on a 50-pound test line, 250 on an 80-pound line.
Any billfish heavier that 200 pounds gets a point a pound on 80, 1.3 points a pound on 50.
The T&R program has been so successful that this year 10 boats will be double-tagging their catches. Besides the original tag, an additional pop-off satellite tag will be attached to the released marlin, which will transmit back significant data such as its migratory patterns.
They're even going to have a special contest for the anglers to see which of their released marlin travel the farthest from here.
It'll have to go some.
SO far, the most amazing tag-and-release fish tale is about the marlin that spent 808 days at sea after first being caught off Kona. More than two years later, it was caught -- unfortunately, this time for good -- in the East China Sea.
''It was kind of a home-run thing,'' Fithian said. ''It shows that a marlin can cover a whole lot of territory.''
By the way, who's Glassell, you ask?
He just happens to hold the official world record for the biggest Pacific blue marlin ever caught -- 1,560 pounds -- off the coast of Peru in 1953.
''He created the whole industry of billfishing because everybody's trying to beat that record,'' Fithian said.
Glassell believes a record Pacific blue is still swimming out there in Kona waters, waiting to be caught.
Fithian isn't surprised.
The two biggest blue marlin ever caught -- an 1,800-pounder by Cornelius Choy and a 1,600-pounder by Black Bart Miller -- are from here. But they're not recognized by the International Game Fish Association because the angler needed assistance to reel them in.