News

Very late in the year and not anticipated, landing limits for Atlantic marlin were raised in the international arena. It was the overfished status of Atlantic billfish that became the…

November 16, 2018

Recreational Billfish Landings Update

The table below provides preliminary 2018 (January 1, 2018 through September 30, 2018) landings in numbers of fish for Atlantic blue and white marlin, roundscale spearfish, and western Atlantic sailfish. …

November 15, 2018

Atlantic Blue Marlin Research

Atlantic blue marlin are considered by many in the sportfishing world to be THE pinnacle gamefish. A species targeted by tens of thousands anglers each year. But what do we…

October 27, 2018

Billfish Conservation Act Amendment Update

TBF was very pleased when the National Marine Fisheries Service staff announced the 2018 amended Billfish Conservation Act (BCA) must comply with the agency’s official Guidelines. The amended BCA prohibits…

October 13, 2018

Increase of Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Quota

Good News Bluefin Tuna Anglers! The Angling Allocation of Atlantic bluefin tuna, beginning January 2019, increases by .3 of a metric ton or 661 pounds. This increase applies in each…

October 5, 2018

2018 Tag & Release Competition Update

Here are the current standings in all categories (except Cape Verde, apologies, we’re working on it) as of October 5, 2018. Scroll through, find your name, find your friend’s name!…

October 1, 2018

No More Driftnet Swordfish fishery Off Southern California

California Governor Signs Historic Law Governor Jerry Brown of California signed into law an act passed by his legislator to begin the phase out use of mile long commercial drift…

September 27, 2018

Learning to Fish Via Youtube?

Sportfishing is an art/skill that cannot be mastered quickly. It takes time, energy, failure, and money to become an accomplished angler. The interesting aspect of fishing is the pressure that…

September 20, 2018

Analysis of Minimum Length for Blue Marlin Tournaments

The Billfish Foundation’s newest Winthrop P. Rockefeller Ocean Program intern, Nick Becker, a recent graduate from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, worked with blue marlin tournaments out of…

September 5, 2018

Florida East Coast Closed Zone Will Remain Closed!

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is not issuing an Exempted Fishing Permit (EFP) that would open the east coast Florida closed zone to pelagic longline vessels for the stated…

August 15, 2018

Atlantic Billfish Recreational Landings Update

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just released their preliminary 2018 (January 1, 2018 through June 30, 2018) landings in numbers of fish for Atlantic blue and white marlin, roundscale…

August 13, 2018

Passing of a Legend – Capt. Ron Hamlin

Hamlin was recognized not only for his expertise at placing anglers from all over the world on billfish, but also for his contributions to billfish conservation. His expertise at the…

August 13, 2018

Closing a Loophole in the Billfish Conservation Act

The amended Billfish Conservation Act (BCA) passed Congress and was signed into law this month, August 2018. The amended BCA prohibits Pacific billfish landed in Hawaii and in the U.S. Pacific…

August 8, 2018

Sargassum Invasion

Weed, Weed – too much of a good thing? Offshore anglers know seeing and fishing a floating Sargassum weed line is a good thing for it they usually are very…

July 25, 2018

Atlantic Bluefin Tuna (BFT) Angling Category – Northern Area Trophy Fishery Closing

NOAA Fisheries will close the Atlantic bluefin tuna (BFT) Angling category fishery for large medium and giant “trophy” BFT (measuring 73” or greater) in the northern area effective 11:30 p.m. local time on…

July 18, 2018

Tag & Release Competition Update

Our annual Tag & Release competition is about 3/4 over and we will crown this year’s winners later this year at our Tag and Release Award Ceremony in February. We…

July 13, 2018

Billfish Policy Update – July 2018

To keep you up to date and for your convenience, we have summarized some of the latest policies that effect billfish and our community. The Council recommended actions on: Keep up…

June 4, 2018

Protect the Option to Incidentally catch & land a Bluefin Tuna in the Gulf of Mexico

Over the past several years, the bluefin tuna (BFT) incidental bite in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) has picked up. Through the efforts of TBF, GOM anglers have an allocation…

June 4, 2018

Bill introduced to phase out large-mesh drift gillnets off California

The practice of allowing the U.S. west coast fishery to still use large mesh drift gillnets is insane. The fact that this method of fishing is still allowed shows how much influence the commercial fishing industry has with the federal…

May 16, 2018

Announcing TBF’s Annual Gala – The Spy Who Tagged Me!

Make sure to save the date and come dressed as your favorite character(s) for our gala & fundraiser, during the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, Friday, November 2, 2018 at…

May 3, 2018

TBF submitted comments in opposition to EFP off the Gulf of Maine

The Billfish Foundation recently submitted comments against NOAA’s proposed Exempted Fishing Permit (EFP) opening of the Cashes Ledge and Western Gulf of Maine (WGOM) closed areas to commercial fishing. Currently,…

April 26, 2018

Why Are Billfish Threatened?

The Billfish Foundation was the result of a movement led by anglers who began noticing there were fewer big fish to catch. At the time, billfish tournaments featured piles of…

April 25, 2018

Stricter Measures Not Included In NMFS Options For Longlines

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) recently issued a plan (Scoping Document, March 2018) to reinvigorate the longline fishery rather than proposing stricter conservation measures. If actions to reinvigorate the…

April 3, 2025

TBF & BFD Simplify Billfish Reporting

April 3, 2025

New Tag & Release Category – TBF Legends

March 14, 2025

Partnering for Billfish Conservation: New Integrated Reporting System (VESL) Simplifies Data Collection

February 4, 2025

2025 TBF Artist of the Year – James Ferrara

February 4, 2025

New Tag & Release Category – TBF Legends

February 4, 2025

TBF 2025 Travel Schedule

January 15, 2025

Extreme Vessel Speed Reduction Rule Withdrawn

January 14, 2025

2025 TBF Award Ceremony

January 8, 2025

TBF’s First 12 Month SAT tag Recovery

January 5, 2025

GZ Lures Partners with The Billfish Foundation

December 7, 2024

The Skillie Project

December 5, 2024

Support TBF with a Year-End Gift

December 5, 2024

Batch Upload

December 5, 2024

TBF Holiday Gifts

November 12, 2024

2022-2023 Conservation Record is out!

November 12, 2024

2024 TBF Gala Recap

November 12, 2024

Online Holiday Auction (Nov 27th – Dec 2nd)

November 6, 2024

Anglers We Will Miss: Dr. C. Phillip Goodyear

October 7, 2024

Fall 2024 Youth Magazines Are Ready!

October 6, 2024

Fast Approaching: Deadline to Submit Tags and Releases for TBF’s Annual Competition

October 5, 2024

TBF’s PhD Scholar Explores Billfish Biology at Friday Harbor Labs

October 4, 2024

Join TBF’s Captain Program, Exclusive $50 Discount in October!

October 3, 2024

TBF Gala on November 1st!

September 18, 2024

TBF at Pirate’s Cove and MidAtlantic

January 13, 2022

Exempted Fishing Permits for East Coast Deep-Set Buoy Gear

NMFS issued 7 Exempted Fishing Permits (EFP) for vessels to fish for BAYS tunas (bigeye, yellowfin albacore, skipjack) and swordfish in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic East…

January 10, 2022

TBF’s Atlantic Shark Depredation Campaign

No balance currently exists between the hugely successful Atlantic shark conservation and management of Atlantic shark fisheries – people fishing, jobs, food markets, experiences, and economics. Balance is needed. Shark…

January 6, 2022

Atlantic Save the Mahi-Mahi Campaign

Led by Blair Wickstrom of Florida Sportsmans Magazine, targets the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (FMC) and NOAA, and calls for, by anglers, greater conservation restraints for mahi-mahi and wahoo,…

January 3, 2022

TBF’s Atlantic Shark Fishery Comments

The Billfish Foundation submitted comments to National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) today on the Draft Review of Atlantic Shark Fishery Review (SHARE) urging the revitalization of the Atlantic shark fishery…

June 24, 2020

NOAA Increases Commercial Swordfish Retention

NOAA Fisheries is doubling the number of swordfish allowed to be harvested by commercial fisheries. These expanded retention limits apply to vessels issued a Swordfish General Commercial permit or an…

May 1, 2020

Hard Caps Accepted for Pacific Gillnet Fishery

On February 7th, the National Marine Fisheries Service published a final ruling on the implementation of hard caps for drift gillnet fisheries (DGN) in the Pacific. These fisheries target thresher…

March 31, 2020

New Federal Rule Changes

The National Marine Fisheries Service’s recently issued its final decision on Gear Restricted Areas (GRA) and Weak Hook use by pelagic longline vessels. These decisions ARE NOT related to the…

February 12, 2020

NMFS Removes Weak Hook Requirement

The 2011 required year-round use of weak hooks (15/0 carbon vs 16/0 steel for regularly used hook) by pelagic longline vessels fishing in the Gulf of Mexico was for 12…

February 10, 2020

NMFS Weakens Gear Restrictions in Atlantic Ocean

The Gear Restricted Area (GRA) off Cape Hatteras implemented to reduce bluefin tuna bycatch by pelagic longline vessels now is open to the gear. The waters had been closed December…

February 5, 2020

NMFS Still Considering Gear and Quota Changes in Atlantic

Pelagic longline “research” decisions not yet issued that could authorize the gear to fish inside waters closed for 19 and 20 years off of Florida’s east coast, Charleston and in…

December 6, 2019

A Win for HMS Conservation in the Pacific? Not So Fast…

While no action was taken by the federal Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) at its November meeting to advance further consideration of its recently proposed measure to consider authorizing a…

November 11, 2019

TBF Responds to New Pacific Fishery Management Council Initiative

The Pacific Fishery Management Counsel is proposing to authorize the use of shallow-set longline gear to fish for swordfish off the West Coast of the United States. Below are the…

October 30, 2019

NOAA Proposes Fishing Regulations in Gulf of Mexico

NOAA is considering an amendment to the current Fishery Management Plan for Coral and Coral Reef Resources in Gulf of Mexico. The amendment establishes new and modifies existing habitat areas…

October 4, 2019

FWC Supports TBF In Opposing NMFS Initiatives

The Billfish Foundation is encouraged by the comments made by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) regarding the proposed actions of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NFMS). As…

September 30, 2019

TBF Tells NMFS NO To Harming Billfish and Sportfishing

As promised, below are TBF’s final comments for the NMFS initiative that will potentially decimate billfish populations and harm the recreational fishing community. As a reminder, the new NMFS proposal…

September 27, 2019

New NMFS Initiatives Benefit Longlines and Harm Recreational Community

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is proposing initiatives that once again ignore the recreational fishing community and do not benefit billfish conservation. NMFS seeks to reinvigorate commercial catch by…

September 19, 2019

New Gear Restrictions May Help Billfish in the Pacific

The Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission recently announced new requirements for fisheries targeting tuna in the Eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO). These new regulations intend to reduce sea turtle bycatch but have…

September 9, 2019

Potential Changes to the NOAA HMS Fishery Management Plans

Earlier last week, NOAA Fisheries announced that they are considering changes to the 2006 Consolidated HMS Fishery Management Plan and we will be monitoring and reviewing this further and providing…

July 15, 2019

Proposed Modifications to Pelagic Longline Bluefin Tuna Area-Based and Weak Hook Management Measures

NMFS proposes to modify the one-month closed zone off New Jersey and the spring two-month gear restricted area in the Gulf of Mexico to become Monitoring Zones with an annual…

July 12, 2019

Options to maximize Bluefin Tuna in the Atlantic Ocean

Amendment 13 to the Highly Migratory Species Fishery Management Plan proposes many options striving to maximize utilization of the U.S. bluefin quota. Half of the options propose changes to the…

July 8, 2019

Help Keep Pelagic Longlines OUT of Closed Zones

The U.S. pelagic longline closed zones and gear restricted areas were established to reduce bycatch of juvenile swordfish by protecting nursery grounds, overfished marlin, sailfish, which remain overfished, large coastal…

June 27, 2019

Atlantic Bluefin Tuna In-Season Adjustment

June 12, 2019

New Exempted Fishing Permits for Longlines off US West Coast

Exempted Fishing Permits were issued by the Pacific Fishery Management Council on April 29, 2019 to two vessels to fish off the U.S. west coast in federal waters (Exclusive Economic Zone)…

June 7, 2019

More Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Allocation for Anglers?

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) recently released an Options Paper to amend the current Individual Bluefin Quota (IBQ) strategy, implemented to reduce incidental bycatch of bluefin, in the pelagic…

July 21, 2015

Predicting Atlantic Blue Marlin Distribution

TBF’s Dr. Phil Goodyear, is currently advancing research to use oceanographic data and information recovered from earlier satellite tagging research to predict Atlantic blue marlin distributions in time (month, year,…

May 14, 2015

UNDERSTANDING MAXIMUM SIZE IN THE CATCH: ATLANTIC BLUE MARLIN AS AN EXAMPLE

The most recent Atlantic blue marlin research completed by TBF’s Dr. Phillip Goodyear was published by the American Fisheries Society, the oldest, largest and most influential association of fisheries professionals…

April 8, 2015

BILLFISH BILL MORPHOLOGY

Rostrum: a funny word used by scientists to describe the “upper jaw prolonged into a long stout spear with round cross-section.” To anglers, it’s known as a bill and is…

March 23, 2015

ACT NOW: Keep Australia Open for Fishing!

It has been more than four years since Australia began the process of designing and implementing its national system of marine reserves encompassing all of its federal waters. These reserves…

March 12, 2015

CAPTAIN’S TIPS & TRICKS

We are asking some of the top captains in the world for some of their tricks/tips, and this month, Capt. Chris Sheeder from Casa Vieja Lodge, a Tag & Release Program…

February 15, 2015

CUBAN EVOLUTION

No doubt, as the political debate increases over pros and cons of the United States normalizing relations with Cuba, anglers want to move forward to fish in Cuban waters. While…

February 10, 2015

CAPTAIN’S TIPS

By Capt. Scott Leon from Sandman Fishing team There are two approaches to rigging kite baits that both have their positives and negatives making the choice ultimately up to each…

February 6, 2015

Australian Marine Reserves: Take Two

The Australian government is finally making due on their promise to reevaluate the proposed management plans for the country’s network of Commonwealth Marine Reserves. The initial management plans, released in…

February 3, 2015

Extremism in Fisheries Must be Countered- Costa Rica

Just when you thought you heard every crazy idea, here comes another one! In Costa Rica, the nation to which 283,790 Americans traveled in 2008 to sportfish, which generated $599…

February 3, 2015

Uncovering the Population Structure of Black Marlin

Understanding fish movements and reproduction is highly important for sustainable fisheries management, including for black marlin. Since 2013, Samuel Williams a research student from the University of Queensland has worked…

February 3, 2015

THE OFFSHORE FISHING LEAGUE – PRO SERIES

Very much like NASCAR or a professional sports team, large investment opportunities and top notch fishing skills are heading offshore with the creation and launching of the Offshore Fishing League…

December 12, 2014

FINALIZED AMENDMENT 7 MEASURE FOR BLUEFIN TUNA

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) released the final regulations for the domestic management of western Atlantic bluefin tuna with Amendment 7 to the 2006 Consolidated HMS Fishery Management Plan. Anglers…

December 11, 2014

ICCAT HIGHLIGHTS – NOVEMBER 2014 GENOA, ITALY

The 19th Special meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) met November 2014 in Genoa, Italy to consider changes in management and conservation measures for…

December 10, 2014

GULF & CARIBBEAN FISHERIES INSTITUTE HOLDS 67TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE

The Billfish Foundation (TBF) regularly seeks out and participates in conferences to learn and discuss regional fisheries issues with scientists, policy makers, and local communities. In early November, TBF attended…

November 13, 2014

RESULTS OF PUBLIC CONSULTATION ON THE FUTURE OF BERMUDA’S EEZ

Public Input on the Future of Bermuda’s EEZ In 2013, the Bermudian government began the ongoing process of evaluating options for the future management of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ).…

April 10, 2014

TBF AT CASA VIEJA LODGE

If you ask any serious offshore angler where the best billfish action in the world is, chances are Casa Vieja Lodge (CVL) and Guatemala are one of the first answers…

March 25, 2014

RECREATIONAL FISHING AND BOATING COMMUNITY CALLS ON CONGRESS TO REVAMP MARINE FISHERIES MANAGEMENT

Washington, D.C. – Congress is currently revising the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act, the law that governs our nation’s marine resources. Recreational saltwater anglers and the sportfishing and boating…

March 24, 2014

PALAU ANNOUNCES A BAN OF ALL COMMERCIAL FISHING

On February 4th, 2014 the president of the Republic of Palau, Tommy Remengesau Jr., announced to the United Nation’s his intention to become the first country to close its entire…

March 10, 2014

BERMUDA’S PREMIER ORDERS EEZ NOT TO BE INCLUDED IN HAMILTON DECLARATION

Photo Credit: Bonnier On March 4th the Premier of Bermuda, Craig Cannonier, ordered that Bermuda’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) not be included within the Hamilton Declaration, a multi-lateral agreement for…

March 6, 2014

2014 TAG AND RELEASE CEREMONY RECAP

On February 13, 2014 The Billfish Foundation honored conservation achievements at the 2014 Tag and Release Ceremony held at Miami’s Jungle Island Treetop Ballroom in front of a crowd of more than…

December 19, 2013

A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION FOR AUSTRALIA

Recreational fishing organizations in Australia are applauding the newly elected Liberal Party’s plans to suspend and reform the management plans for the nation’s network of marine reserves. The newly appointed…

December 5, 2013

2013 ICCAT NEGOTIATIONS PROTECTS U.S. SWORDFISH AND BLUEFIN SHARE

Photo Courtesy of Brian Cota The annual negotiations by member nations of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) concluded in late November following intense negotiations over…

November 15, 2013

66TH ANNUAL GULF & CARIBBEAN FISHERIES INSTITUTE

This past November, TBF staff members attended the 66th Annual Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute (GCFI) conference hosted by the Harte Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies of Texas A&M…

October 24, 2013

Bermuda – Potential Marine Reserve Could Stop Fishing in The Blue Marlin Capital

The Billfish Foundation (TBF) wants to make sure anglers in Bermuda are aware of recent developments calling for a no-take marine reserve in Bermudian waters. Organizations such as the PEW…

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