The most comprehensive effort to date to characterize striped marlin (Kajikia audax) movements in the Central North Pacific has revealed unexpectedly broad movements among tracked specimens, with some traveling to the east coast of Australia or halfway to California from their dispersal points around Hawaii.

The original research, funded by a NOAA Saltonstall-Kennedy Program grant, was conducted by scientists associated with the Hawaii-based Pacific Islands Fisheries Group (PIFG) and the Large Pelagics Research Center (LPRC) in Massachusetts.

It was recently published across two papers in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

The papers’ findings could inform future fisheries management measures affecting striped marlin, at a time when K. audax — a top incidental catch of the longline fishery — is considered overfished in the Western and Central North Pacific.

“There is a major lack of information on the movement and ecology of striped marlin in the Central North Pacific,” said co-author and LPRC Director Molly E. Lutcavage.

“The last dedicated study of striped marlin in the Central North Pacific was almost two decades ago, and involved only a handful of marlin captured by recreational, or sport fishers.”

Lead author Chi Hin Lam, Clayward Tam and Lutcavage partnered with commercial vessels belonging to the Hawaii Longline Association to deploy 31 $4,000 pop-up archival satellite tags (PSATs) on striped marlin between 2016 and 2019.

Tam’s cooperative, science-based relationships with skilled longline captains made the partnerships successful.

“This is another example of the Hawaii longline vessels playing a significant role in cooperative research with leading scientists,” said Eric Kingma, executive director of the Hawaii Longline Association (HLA).

“We have a long history of scientific collaboration, and our fleet has served as a research platform for decades. HLA congratulates the authors on their important findings and looks forward to working with PIFG and other scientists on future fisheries management and marine conservation research.”