The tagging effort aboard Shogun continued as TAG team returned to the region of Tuesday's hot bite, less than a 14h run from San Diego. We picked up right where we left off. At dawn after drifting for 3 hours we were just about to pick up and leave to start searching for fish in less than ideal conditions, when our TAG summer intern, James Stiltner hooked up on a bluefin tuna. This morning the team of interns, graduate students, post-docs and techs had set up for tagging and loading fish into the wells. The Shogun crew led by Captains Norm and Bruce, with Randy, Tommy, Scott, Chachi - snapped into action and had bluefin lined up for the swimstep team who were often waste deep in water as the rough conditions made things sporty. Sure enough before 8am we had put out the remaining 7 archival tags –for a grand total of 110 tagged bluefin in two stops! Bluefin of a perfect size and yellowfin were loaded onto the ship at sunrise. The bite was wide open, and it's hard to imagine the quality of fishing we observed. More samples were taken to observe diet and isotopic signature which enables the team led by Dan Madigan to discern where these two year old tunas have come from. All and all it was a wonderful day- despite some challenging seas.
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