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Tagged Fish Found 8,000 Miles Away From Home, In a Bird's Stomach!

by Ryan Rayhill on October 4, 2007 at 09:27 AM

Tagged Fish Nearly 8,000 Miles From Where Expected

When researchers at a Washington State fish hatchery implanted one of their tiny steelhead fish with an electronic tag in 2005, they expected to find the little guy to the northwest in the frigid waters near Alaska, where many of the fish end up.

The steelhead's tag, a tracking device similar to those used in household pets, was, much to the researchers' surprise, recently found in the stomach of a baby bird nearly 8,000 miles away on an island, charmingly called Big Moggy, off of New Zealand.

Scientists are attempting to figure out just how the fish's tag got in the stomach of the chick, known as a sooty shearwater. The two most prevalent theories about the tag include:

  • The shearwater ate the fish off the coast of Oregon, where the birds migrate every year, and then the tag got lodged in its stomach and made its way into the chick's mouth over a year later.
  • The fish was caught in a net by Japanese or Russian fishermen near Alaska, then was thrown overboard to become food for the flocks of birds that follow the fishing vessels looking for a bite.

Now, what's the point of this story? Apparenlty, scientists hope to use this case to shed light on the connection between ecosystems throughout the Pacific and the Northwest U.S., particularly that of salmon. It looks like they hit the jackpot with this bizarre bit of eco-evidence.

From News-Leader

Related Links:

Tags: Fish, Hunt, New Zealand, NewZealand, passive integrated transponder, PassiveIntegratedTransponder, Sooty Shearwater, SootyShearwater, Weird

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