TAGGING OF RAYS PROHIBITED

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TAGGING OF RAYS PROHIBITED!

Dear Tagging Members,

I am sad to say that over the past couple of months I have seen some disturbing pictures and videos of really poorly tagged rays.

Overall, we have a recapture rate of less than 1% for all ray species that have been tagged in the ORI-CFTP, indicating that we receive very few recaptures from these animals. Although some of the recaptures have provided us with useful data, there are still too few recaptures to justify the continuation of tagging these animals using dart tags. Therefore, we are stopping the tagging of all ray species that are caught with immediate effect!

We previously removed rays from the Priority Tagging List, but we are reiterating this again now. Please DO NOT tag any ray species that you catch unless it is for a specific project where you have been trained how to tag these animals. Unfortunately, we are not too sure why there are so few tag recaptures but some thoughts are poor tag placement (i.e. in the kidneys as seen in the above pictures – leading to possible post-release mortality), poor tag retention and possible biting off of tags by fish species such as puffer fish.

Please feel free to share this post, and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me on 079 529 0711.

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