Tagging results from five years of a federal experimental Atlantic halibut fishery in the eastern Gulf of Maine are presented in this paper. These data show both localized movements within the study area and long-distance emigrations of juveniles. Twenty-eight percent of the recoveries from this study were made in Canadian waters, demonstrating an interchange between fish in the Gulf of Maine and those considered part of the Scotian Shelf/Southern Grand Banks stock unit. The predominance of long-distance, northeastward movement of juveniles poses the question of compensatory emigration in response to the predicted southwestward drift of eggs and larvae.

In the Northwest Atlantic, emerging evidence suggests that different stocks of Atlantic halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus) exist in Canadian and U.S. waters. To examine the movement of Atlantic halibut that occupy the Gulf of Maine in U.S. waters during the summer, two types of electronic tags were attached to large adult fish (n = 70) in [2007][2008][2009]. None of the recovered tags (n = 12) provided evidence that the fish occupied the relatively deep waters of the continental slope during the winter, where Canadian Atlantic halibut have been shown to spawn. This observation provides additional evidence for the hypothesis that different stocks of Atlantic halibut exist in Canadian and U.S. waters. Furthermore, this observation requires reexamination of the long-standing assumptions made by fisheries scientists that all Atlantic halibut spawn in deep water on the continental slope and that the majority of mature Atlantic halibut spawn annually. This information may be important for understanding the population dynamics of Atlantic halibut in U.S. waters.

This paper presents results from a four year tagging effort on Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) in the waters off the east coast of the United States. This study was designed to describe seasonal movements and evaluate new live capture methods for mobile gear using an aquarium codend. A total of 85 561 Atlantic herring were tagged and released in two strata; the Gulf of Maine during the summer feeding/spawning period and Southern New England during the winter feeding period. The return rate, adjusted for reporting, was 2.6% and the patterns of returns largely reflected results from previous tagging studies in the US and Canada. The two main contributions of this work to the established body of herring tagging literature are: (1) the identification of current seasonal movements, including the migration of Atlantic herring from Southern New England in the winter to Nova Scotia in the summer, and (2) the implementation of a capture technique for midwater trawl gear and the ability this provided the researchers to successfully tag Atlantic herring on their winter feeding grounds as far south as Cape May, NJ.