NSW Department of Primary Industries, Lord Howe Island Marine Park News, The Lord Howe Island Signal
Members of the Project Kingfish research team visited Lord Howe Island (LHI) in December. Project Kingfish is a research program funded by the NSW Recreational Fishing Trust that aims to enable collaboration between scientists and expert anglers to improve understanding of the East Australia yellowtail kingfish stock.
Yellowtail kingfish (Seriola lalandi) are highly mobile marine predators that occur in coastal and offshore pelagic waters along the Australian southern seaboard between Queensland and Western Australia, including Tasmania and offshore islands such as LHI.
Major knowledge gaps currently exist about the status of the ‘Eastern Australia’ biological population (which spans SA, VIC, TAS, NSW, QLD and New Zealand). These gaps include the distribution and behavior of reproductive individuals, the location of key spawning habitats, and how this species recruits to the coast.
With help from recreational anglers, long term tag-and-release programs such as the NSW Game Fish Tagging Program have revealed a level of connectivity kingfish have between mainland Australian states, as well as offshore sites such as LHI and New Zealand.
The frequency of such long-distance movements, and the whereabouts of spawning-sized kingfish (>95 cm total length) between release and recapture still remain poorly understood. Using state-of-the-art satellite tracking technology and ocean microchemistry, Project Kingfish aims to fill these knowledge gaps.
The objectives of the trip were to explore the movements and behaviour of kingfish found around LHI, and their broader connectivity with kingfish found across eastern Australia, by:
1. collecting biological samples from kingfish caught off LHI
2. deploying five satellite tracking devices on mature-size kingfish.
With the assistance of resident anglers Scott Wilson and Grant Devine, the research team successfully deployed five satellite tags on large, sexually mature kingfish.
Two of the tags are programmed to remain attached to the fish for three months, while the other three will hopefully track their movements for up to a year.
Following release at a programmed date, the tags are expected to surface and transmit the collected data to the research team via satellite.
If you capture one of the satellite-tagged kingfish, we kindly ask that you release the fish to help enhance our understanding of the LHI kingfish population. Please contact the research team at project.kingfish@sims.org.au to report any catch or sighting of the tagged fish.
In addition, the team received an overwhelming number of kingfish frames and heads donated by local anglers. Otoliths (ear bones), genetic, gonads and stomach samples were successfully collected.
These extremely valuable donations will help enhance understanding of kingfish population structure across eastern Australia, their diet, the sexually maturity of the population surrounding LHI, and the sea temperatures kingfish are spawned at.
The team would like to extend a huge thank you to the anglers who donated samples to support this research, including Scott Wilson, Grant Devine, Jack Shick and Alasdair Nicholson, and to the Lord Howe Island Game Fishing Club for their warm welcome and interest in this research.
The team is planning to return to LHI in 2023 for another research campaign. Updates on the kingfish tagged during the trip will be shared once the tags have detached and transmitted data. In the meantime, you can follow Project Kingfish on Facebook, Instagram or get in touch with the team via email at project.kingfish@sims.org.au.
This article appeared in The Lord Howe Island Signal, 31 January 2023.
