Angler Help Needed for Ongoing Red Snapper Research

Attention Anglers!

Your help is needed as part of an ongoing research project on local Red Snapper populations!

Kesley Gibson is a doctoral student with the Center for Sportfish Science and Conservation. She is leading a project for her dissertation work to determine if Red Snapper prefer a particular reefing material at the Corpus Christi Nearshore Reef site (MU-775), an artificial reef located offshore of Corpus Christi, Texas. This information is important for future nearshore reefing projects by helping to determine the best material for artificial reefs designed to support Red Snapper. Her team tagged 21 Red Snapper in January 2017 with internal acoustic transmitters, which provide fine-scale locations of these fish in order to track their movements and residency around this particular artificial reef. Each fish with an acoustic transmitter was also tagged with a green external dart tag that says “Please Release” as well as a unique tag number (see photo).

Kesley is anticipating to collect at least one year’s worth of data from these transmitters so we are encouraging anglers to release these fish if caught.

If you happen to catch a tagged fish, please record the tag number prior to releasing the fish with the tag intact and call or email us to let us know the tag number:

Phone: 361-825-3071
Email: sportfish@tamucc.edu