Ever wondered what kind of research has come from TBF? Check out our publications repository!https://t.co/AE2M95cbWl https://t.co/2PVtPlq8sf
— The Billfish Foundation (@TagBillfish) December 24, 2020
Are you familiar with The Billfish Foundation?
If you are into the sport of offshore sportfishing, there is a pretty good chance you have heard of this organization. There is also a good chance that you have donated money to this great charitable cause.
The Billfish Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. The goal is to preserve game fish and ecosystem for the future generations of anglers.
The Billfish Foundation has a “sustained emphasis on synthesizing science and policy into effective, yet reasonable, fishery management solutions- solutions that are good for the fish but not punitive to recreational anglers.”
That sounds good, but what does that mean exactly?
One of the biggest things TBF does is the collection of data about the fish. They do this through an extensive tag and release campaign. This is very labor intensive but absolutely critical to the mission of TBF because you can’t make good decisions about fisheries if you don’t have good data.
So it all begins with catching, tagging, and releasing a lot of different fish species.
This data is invaluable for determining the value of a fish species. You see, if they can prove the value of species, they can show that this species helps the local economy and they can use this information to help when it comes to lawmaking decisions.
No one values something that is worth zero. Of course fish are worth something, and it’s TBF goal to figure out and to explain that worth to interested stakeholders.
The more valuable something is, the more someone will fight to keep it. Or to conserve it for future generations.
If you click on the tweet embedded at the top of this post, you’ll be taken to TBF website where you can learn about some of the work they have published. In the last 25 years TBF network of volunteers has tagged and released over 250,000 fish.
They’ve learned a ton about the fish, their habitat, and the oceans in general, and they publish their findings on their website.
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