The Bonefish & Tarpon Trust went looking for baby bonefish. This follows up on an effort to find baby bones in 2013 that didn’t find any. This year, they did. Babies grow and become adults and the adults become legends.
OK… those are adorable.
After revising our search strategy based on the previous year’s results and new information from the Bahamas, BTT set out for the week long Baby Bonefish Blitz in June. We are happy to announce that this year we were successful in locating juvenile bonefish in one location of the Upper Keys where BTT staff and volunteers seined a shoreline that had been identified as likely juvenile bonefish habitat. The juveniles were found with a couple hundred mojarras, something we’ve come to expect based on the previous BTT research conducted in The Bahamas. We are currently awaiting genetic analysis to confirm that these were juvenile Albula vulpes, and not one of the other species of bonefish that aren’t caught in the recreational fishery.
I found one, smallish, bonefish when I was there in 2013. The youth movement appears to be going well in the Keys. Here’s to hoping it continues.
My one Florida Bonefish
also…
If you find juvenile bonefish like the ones in the photo, please let us know the location and date (email: info@bonefishtarpontrust.org). Please do not collect the juvenile bonefish; a research permit is required to collect.
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Tags: Bonefish and Tarpon Trust, Florida
The state record in Mississippi for a bonefish is about the size of one of those in the guy’s hand. Supposedly caught on rod and reel, the guy who is credited with the record, is a commercial net fisherman, and holds 6 other records with rare fish in tiny sizes he “caught on rod and reel”.
While on a fishing trip last june in the Bahamas between San Salvador to rum key we caught a 40lb dolphin, and when he was on the deck he spit up a 2in. Baby bone.We were in about 600 feet of water. The sad news is the bone was dead