Billfish forensics at Gamex in Exmouth

Highly respected Australian marine biologist Dr Julian Pepperell will be a special guest at this week's hugely popular Gamex fishing tournament in Exmouth which kicked off today (Friday March 11) and runs till Saturday March 19.

More than 300 anglers from all over Australia will be competing at the famous fishing tournament. But Dr Pepperell will be at Gamex as part of his project to use local fishing tournaments to monitor and research important recreational game fishing species.

Specifically, he is trialling a new non-invasive genetic sampling technique,
which basically involves collecting fish DNA from their external body
mucous.

The new technique has been adapted by using ‘FTA Cards’
normally used in human forensic work. FTA Cards are used to store DNA
after fish slime has been obtained from the fish and wiped on the cards,
ready to be mailed to the lab for genetic analyses.

This project, supported by Recfishwest and the Department of Fisheries, is funded by WA rec-fishing licence money through the Recreational Fishing Initiatives Fund (RFIF).

This program encourages fishing clubs and recreational fishers to facilitate and conduct monitoring and biological research on billfish, tuna, sharks, mackerel and other fish captured during major game fishing tournaments throughout WA, as well as during normal game fishing club activities.

In NSW, game fishing tournaments have facilitated over 40 research projects from over 20 scientific organisations. These include a range of projects that assist in the management and sustainability of these species through studies of their biology, ageing, genetics, ecology, reproduction and movement.

Exmouth's abundant marlin and sailfish are ideal subjects for this new non-invasive genetic sampling, as the fish have been shown to handle catch and release fishing well.

Recfishwest believes that Dr Pepperell’s coordinated biological monitoring and sampling program for tournament and club-based fishing in WA will ultimately provide important data for the purposes of better understanding various species, particularly the movement and population genetics of billfish species inhabiting the Indian Ocean, about which very little is currently known.

The program is also archiving tissue samples from all fish weighed at the tournaments for potential future use by researchers both locally and globally.

To date, Dr Pepperell has attended three tournaments in WA resulting in 172 fish being sampled and 747 fish being tagged.

This project is another example that demonstrates a high level of commitment by recreational fishers towards assisting research to improve our knowledge of the state’s fish stocks.

In the 2014 Gamex, Dr Pepperell and his team weighed, sexed, collected samples and measured over 90 fish over a wide range of species including Spanish mackerel, yellowfin tuna, wahoo, dolphin fish and several marlin species. In the same year, anglers tagged 600 billfish.

In 2015, Gamex was cancelled due to a cyclone. But it looks like a week of 15-25 knot typical WA seabreezes and plenty of fish for sport and science this year. For more information on Gamex visit http://gamex.net.au/