So you found a tagged fish?
Tagging and marking are important techniques fisheries biologists use to study individual aquatic animals or populations. They will tag or mark aquatic animals to obtain information necessary for research or management. By reporting tagged or marked fish, you can assist in:
- Stock identification -determining whether stocks or subpopulations are being utilized for sport or commercial fisheries
- Migrations - figuring out the path and distance of migration, rate of movement, and homing tendencies of a species
- Behavior - identifying factors that limit abundance such as habitat selection and intra- and interspecies interactions
- Age - validating of aging methods and determining growth rates
- Mortality rates - following the effects of natural and fishing mortality on a population
- Abundance - using mark and recapture experiment
- Stocking success - tracking the results of stocking hatchery-reared fish
Tag types you might find on Minnesota fish