The Northeast Regional Cod Tagging Program is pleased to announce the winners of its 22nd cash lottery. Five winners will each receive $200. To be eligible for the lottery, winners reported four critical pieces of information following the recapture of a tagged cod including tag number, recapture location, fish length and date captured.
This lottery is drawn for five categories depending on where the tagged cod were found: 1) Northern Gulf of Maine and Canadian waters, 2) Georges Bank, 3) Cape Cod and vicinity, 4) New Hampshire and Massachusetts Inshore waters, and 5) Processing plants and markets.
The winners for June 2005 are:
Category 1: Julian K. Muise, Tusket, NS, Canada
Category 2: Scott Russell, Portland, ME, USA
Category 3: Peggy A. Hawkins, South Portland, ME, USA
Category 4: Jim D. Ford, East Kingston, NH, USA
Category 5: Ronald Gustafson, Scituate, MA, USA
The Northeast Regional Cod Tagging Program represents the largest cod tagging program initiated to date along the eastern seaboard of the North American continent. A significant example of collaborative research, the program involves commercial fishermen and research organizations from Nova Scotia, Canada down to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. This initiative arose from a need identified by regional groundfish fishermen and scientists to understand current distribution and migration patterns of Atlantic cod as important for management efforts to rebuild cod stocks.
The program aim to tag and release over 100,000 Atlantic cod between March 2003 and March 2005 has been reached. To date, over 110,000 cod have been tagged and over 3,800 tags have been recovered.
Fishermen and fish processors are asked to keep an eye open for these tagged cod. Anyone who returns recapture information will receive a reward (either a T-shirt, hat or mug). In addition, anyone who supplies the four key pieces of information (tag number, recapture location, fish length and date) will automatically be entered into the monthly cash lottery.
Tag recapture information can be reported by:
calling our toll-free number, 1-866-447-2111 (free for US & Canada)
or emailing us at codresearch@gmri.org
mailing the tag and information to us at: Northeast Regional Cod Tagging Program, Gulf of Maine Research Institute, 350 Commercial Street, Portland, ME 04101.
Even though we have a new mailing address, tags returned to our “old” PO Box 7549 will still reach us through the end of 2005!
For more information on the progress of the Program, please visit the official web site: www.codresearch.org.
The Northeast Regional Cod Tagging Program is funded by NOAA Fisheries, Northeast Regional Office through the Cooperative Research Partners Initiative and the New England Fisheries Management Council. The program is coordinated by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and includes an international team of researchers from the Maine Department of Marine Resources, Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Island Institute, Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association, Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, and University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology to address these questions.
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