Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time, it is Tom Brennan who is the Chief Marketing Officer of Rootstock Software, a developer of Cloud ERP software for manufacturers, distributors and supply chain organizations. Tom began his career in sales with companies such as NCR and Xerox in the early 80’s. He later progressed into marketing management roles at companies including Coda Inc., ManagedOps.com, and FinancialForce. When he is not evangelizing about Cloud ERP, he spends his free time fishing the waters of Cape Cod for Bluefish, Striped Bass and Bluefin Tuna. Here he is with some friends and the first tuna he caught. At bottom is a much bigger catch - he has become much more adept as he describes below:
One of my hobbies is Bluefin Tuna Fishing. To be clear, I am an amateur tuna fisherman, and not a very good one. But even a weekend warrior like me can get lucky with the right technique and the right technology. The fishing technology we use ranges from the very simple to the more sophisticated originally developed by the U.S. Navy and NASA. It truly is amazing how much complex defense and space technology has been consumerized and available at reasonable prices for recreational fisherman.
Recreational fishing licenses allow us to keep fish between 47 inches to under 73 inches during most of the season. We are sometimes allowed to keep “Giants” which are over 73 inches. Charter and commercial fisherman can keep more. If you watch the TV show Wicked Tuna, they keep Giants and let go of “shorts” which are the fish under 73 inches. Shorts can still weigh around 235 lbs. I have friends and relatives who have caught fish longer than 100 inches and weighing over 1,000 lbs. When your reel starts screaming and line starts peels off – you never really know how big the fish is until you get it close to the boat. And sometimes we mistakenly hook sharks. Oops!
Although tuna fishing has come a long way since the days of the Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway’s character in the classic published in 1952 caught a marlin), many of the principles remain the same. For instance, tuna fishing is still primarily a rod and reel game when fishing from recreational sized boats. However, the technology around it is has changed, giving amateurs like me a decent shot at catching the big one.
Depending on the year, fat content and grade of the fish, Bluefin tuna can go for thousands of dollars, especially in the Japanese market where many of them are shipped from Cape Cod. One lucky captain recently sold a fish for $3.1 million!
One of the hardest parts of tuna fishing is finding the fish because they are constantly on the move looking for food. They can travel up to 40 mph and are known to travel thousands of miles. You might see them at a particular location one day and find them 10 miles away the next. I’ve caught them two miles from shore, but know people that will travel 100 miles offshore to catch them.
So what technology do we have to help find the fish? Without sighting intelligence from other fishermen, most people first go to a spot where they’ve seen or caught fish before. Using a GPS and mapping system, you can punch in the longitude and latitude of your favorite spot, turn on your auto pilot and let the boat take you there without touching the wheel! The technology used on huge commercial freighters is now available on relatively small boats. Upon arrival at your spot, you do as Hemingway did and use your eyes to look for birds feeding on schools of smaller bait fish which are sometimes forced to the surface by schools of tuna. Whales are also great signs to watch for - If they are around, there is a good chance the whole food chain is there including tuna.
Frankly, most of our trips turn into a glorified whale watches which is ok by me. We try to keep our distance from the whales, but sometimes they just pop up unexpectedly and it can get too close for comfort.
If we can’t see tuna breaking the surface (which by the way is a truly magnificent sight), we use sonar and technologies originally developed by the US Navy (like CHIRP) to spot fish below. The fish can be anywhere in the water column from the surface to hundreds of feet below (they can dive to 3,000 feet deep). The sonar can indicate the rough size and depth of the fish. Once you’ve spotted them, one technique is to drop live bait such as a mackerel to the depth you see them on the sonar. I could go into lots of detail about today’s sonar devices, but let’s just say that much of the technology used by our military has made it into these consumer grade devices and it helps immensely. Sonar is critical to help find the fish, but also great to spot the schools of bait fish the tuna feed on.
So let’s say you get to your favorite spot and you can’t see any signs of life on the surface or below (this happens more than I care to admit). How do you find the fish? One way is to flip on your radar. With certain settings, you can detect birds or feeding whales that are miles away on the surface. The radar picks up the disturbances and you simply head in that direction. Hopefully the birds and whales have found the tuna.
Radar also helps you find where other boats are fishing - that is if you believe the other boats know something you don’t. Group Think is definitely an issue in tuna fishing. Boats tend to collect around each other, thinking someone else has spotted fish (sometimes they are right). To find the "tuna fleet" as it is called, all you have to do is turn your radar to a 10 mile radius and you can see where the boats are congregating.
To be clear, most captains (especially charter and commercial fisherman) don’t want other boats to know where they are. There is an interesting dynamic and professional code between boat captains about sharing locations. If word gets out (usually by VHF radio) that there are fish in a certain area it can soon be jammed with boats. This is a huge issue if you hook on a big fish that takes 1,000 yards of line out behind your boat and is jumping on the surface. If a boat runs over the line, the line snaps, you lose the fish and possibly thousands of dollars. Needless to say, it can get testy out there on the high seas when a whole fleet is concentrated on one school of fish.
There are about a half dozen recreational boat captains in my marina who sometimes fish together. We fan out across the ocean looking for birds, bait, whales or tuna marks on our sonar. We generally know where each of us is heading at the start of the day. If we find a spot that looks promising, we will sometimes call each other on the radio and give cryptic messages like “it looks healthy here or we are marking fish here.” But it’s important to note that we don’t say where “here” is. That is because we don’t want everyone else on the radio to know where we are and attract a crowd. Nevertheless, we listen constantly for clues and try to triangulate a boat’s location based on radio signal strength especially when a captain announces they’ve landed one.
When we are closer to shore (say inside 10 miles) we can sometimes just call each other on our cell phones. But believe it or not, one of the best locator technologies we’ve been using is the “Find my Friends” mobile app. The same app you use to track your teenagers can be used to track boat captains! I can see exactly where my friends are fishing. If I hear they’ve hooked up, we simply steam to their location without giving away their precious location details. This is a shot of Cape Cod in November, but you can see how far away I can spot my friends.
Some captains, especially those that are chasing fish 50+ miles off shore in the Gulf Stream invest in satellite services (thank you NASA and NOAA) to find fish. The services provide heat maps of water temperature, ocean current information and can even help you detect the likelihood of bait fish. Like all fish, tuna have a water temperature range they are most comfortable in. This is really important to understand early in the season when the water is cold and starting to warm up. Some might say this is almost cheating, but satellite services can tell you the best places to find the optimal water temperature (usually 60-70 degrees for tuna). But if it is taking you two plus hours to get to your destination, it can really save you some fuel.
The maps also indicate ocean currents, rips and eddies that collect plankton, seaweed lines, and balls of bait. These water changes and currents set the dinner table for whole seafood chain and are great places to find tuna and other big fish species.
The satellite charts (along with your electronics) can help you detect water temperature breaks so you know which side of the rip or tide line to fish on. So yes, a simple water thermometer can help you find tuna. And the satellite services can help you detect plankton, which in turn helps you find the bait that tuna prey on. They do this by detecting the chlorophyll levels in the water. According to NASA
“Like plants on land, phytoplankton use chlorophyll and other light-harvesting pigments to carry out photosynthesis, absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide to produce sugars for fuel. Chlorophyll in the water changes the way it reflects and absorbs sunlight, allowing scientists to map the amount and location of phytoplankton.”
So, if you can find chlorophyll concentrations on a satellite map – you have a chance at finding plankton and the whole seafood chain. This is just another reason why satellite services are well worth the investment if you are fishing far offshore.
I could go deeper into technologies related to lures, fishing line and more advanced uses of sonar, radar, satellites and GPS, but I think you get the idea. Technology has dramatically changed recreational fishing. While many of the basics of tuna fishing are still the same as in Hemingway’s era, there is lots of new technology to help us amateurs. Good thing, because I need all the technology I can get.
If you want to get a glimpse of Bluefin Tuna fishing up close and also want to support the fight against Alzheimer’s, get to Gloucester Massachusetts on July 23-25th for the Bluefin Blowout. It’s a great fishing tournament and fundraiser sponsored by friend Warren Waugh of the Lyon Waugh Auto Group. One of the main attractions is the weigh in each day. Here is a picture of what you can expect to see:
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