Jul222016
Daily DrakeHeliosjourney

Four hundred miles is a significant feat, say for an electric car on a single charge. (Tesla is currently testing vehicles with a similar range.) It’s also a helluva push for a juvenile tarpon, a fish that would typically stick close to home until reaching sexual maturation. But according to findings from Bonefish & Tarpon Trust’s (BTT) new acoustic tagging program, a small silver king dubbed “Helios” is changing what we know about migration.

Helios is an approximately 45-pound tarpon sponsored by Perk Perkins, CEO of Orvis. It was caught on a live crab and tagged in May in the Lower Florida Keys by BTT scientists from UMass Amherst and Carleton University. The itinerant tarpon was later detected in June, after a one-month run from the Keys to the Port Orange area, just south of Dayton Beach, FL.

Heliosjourney“This detection is really special because it’s the first time we have been able to actively track fish in this size range—previous satellite tagging efforts funded by BTT were limited to tagging fish 80 pounds or larger. A 45-pound fish like Helios is years from becoming sexually mature, which has been considered the size that tarpon start longer distance migrations. It’s also pretty remarkable that it traveled so far in a short period of time.”

BTT says acoustic tagging efforts will continue to provide new insight into tarpon movement and habitat use during different life stages—information that’s critical to conservation efforts.

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Tom Bie
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Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.

Category: Daily Drake
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Author: Tom Bie

Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.

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