Nantucket White Marlin Project Adds Two Tags and Reports a Nearly 7,000-Mile Track

Two more satellite tags went onto white marlin off Nantucket during the Skillie Project’s third season. The September 18 update from The Billfish Foundation also reports a result from an earlier season: one tagged white marlin traveled nearly 7,000 miles over eight months.

That earlier fish was caught by angler Tom Ripley with Captain Jacques “Jac” Paul-Hus and mates Connor Spillman and Kyle Evanst. Its track gives researchers a record of movement well beyond the waters south of Nantucket. It is a finding from one fish, not a map of where every white marlin goes.

The University of Maine’s Pelagic Fisheries Lab supports tag deployment and processes and analyzes the transmitted data. The work is intended to improve understanding of white marlin movements, behavior and habitat use across the Atlantic. The destinations and results for the newly tagged fish are not yet known.

Four boats and their crews supported this season’s deployments: El Diablo, Riptide, Whiskey and Scup Slayer. The project depends on experienced boat handling, careful fish handling and coordination between anglers and researchers. Those steps are part of collecting useful information, not simply getting a tag into a fish.

For offshore anglers, the concrete result is a longer view of a fishery that cannot be understood from local catches alone. This update adds two deployments and an eight-month movement record; it does not establish a population trend or announce a change in fishing regulations.