Aloha Taggers,

Thank you again to each of you who continues to participate and support the PIFG Tag-IT program. As we wrap up 2025, we have some big news to share, and updates on the past two months.

Also, a special thanks to all our program sponsors this year including Costa, PROMAR, Nanko’s, and PIFG for the amazing giveaways and recognition.

Big News:

Pacific Islands Fisheries Group received a $15,000 Grant from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Recreational Fishing Headquarters. This will provide us with the ability to increase capacity of tags within the community, providing support to long-term taggers, promotion of the program, Record and increase modernization of the tagging program including PSAs, and tagging data modernization. We would like to work with our current taggers, to help co-design ideas on applying this opportunity, please join us at a meeting on Wednesday December 18th from 12:00 pm - 12:45 PM. Click here for the link.

Recoveries

Kekama Demello’s 30” Oio recovered on Maui after 2,071 days at liberty.

This past month we received two recoveries of Oios. One on Maui and one on Oahu. Kekama DeMello recaptured a tagged oio on 10/31/2025 off of Kihei. Tag no. A10737 measured 30" fl. weighed 6.3 lbs. Accordiong to our tag database The oio (round jaw) was originally tagged by Chris Auna on 2/21/2020 off of Kihei. Although the distance for where is was tagged to where it was recapture was less then 1 mile it was at liberty for 2,071 days (5.7 yrs) and grew 8" But who knows where this fish went during its time at liberty.

Recovered Oio Tag A13777 by Anthony Pedrina on Oahu

The second tag recovered Oio was re-released on Thanksgiving by Anthony Pedrina. The tagged oio recovered was originally tagged by Alan Higa on Feb. 23, 2025, 19.5” FL. The oio was at liberty for only 278 days, grew 1” fl. travel less than 1 mile from the area tagged. Although we don’t know where the tagged oio may have gone during its days of liberty. We hope one of you might be lucky enough to recapture it again someday, great work by Alan on good fish handling and release!

October & November Catches

Royce Yoshimura’s 12.5” Papio Nice going!

October and November saw 29 fish tagged and released. It feels like an interesting season as the oama are still showing up, there still remains Halalu and the papio feel abundant. If you have a perspective or observation to share about your season, please email us and we’d like to feature it in the next newsletter.