BBC Fishing Forecast for 2011:

Unusual Year So Far, But Likely to Improve

By Mitchell A. Roffer, Ph.D.

Background:

Since 2003 we have been developing an objective method  for forecasting the overall fishing action at all of the Bahamas Billfish Championship (BBC) tournaments. The hypothesis for forecasting the seasonal marlin fishing action stems from the location and geographic extent of the bluer and often warmer water that occurs from the Cat Island - San Salvador Island area where it is presumed that the marlin concentrate before and during spawning. We have been calling this water "blue marlin water." We assume that the marlin are associated with this water and the more "blue marlin water" that exists in the Abaco Islands and Eleuthera Island areas, the greater the marlin relative apparent abundance will be in these areas.

Based on our observations of the fishing action in the Bahamas over the last 20 years it appears that excellent fishing action overall occurs within the BBC tournament area when there is a substantial volume of the "blue marlin water" pushing over the 100 fathom ledges along the eastern side of Eleuthera and Abaco. Relatively good fishing seasons occur when this water occurs over the 1000 fathom curves, but not the 100 fathom curve of both areas. Mediocre years occur when there is a lack of this water over these areas. Good fishing action is also linked to favorable currents and when the water mass boundaries of these currents are stable for three to five consecutive days over good bottom topography to concentrate the bait. For the BBC tournament areas, the dissolved oxygen concentration does not appear to be a major factor compared with the temperature and clarity of the water. In other areas south, the dissolved oxygen is a major controlling factor on fish distribution.

During the last several years, the conditions were particularly favorable as early as January and February in terms of the presence of "blue marlin" water off Abaco and Eleuthera. However, due to the currents generated by relatively large eddy features located 60-90 miles northeast of Eleuthera, the "blue marlin" water was pulled away from the BBC tournament area. In these years there have been several days when some of this water moved into the tournament area and catch rates increased.  Unfortunately, these favorable conditions were not persistent throughout the entire tournament season.

Ocean Circulation and Sea Surface Temeratures

One of the challenges of producing a forecast of the oceanographic conditions for the BBC Tournament is that these fishing events extend over a relatively long time frame, from the last week in April through the third week of June, 2011, and that conditions are likely to change dramatically from one event to the next. In addition, there are no reliable numerical oceanographic models or even atmospheric models to use to make high resolution forecasts. The models provide some guidance, but for the needed spatial and temporal resolution, we are forced to rely on our qualitative experience as we have been monitoring the conditions over the Bahamas for over 20 years. This experience is based on the satellite observations of the ocean conditions derived by Roffer's Ocean Fishing Forecasting Service, Inc. - ROFFS™ ( www.roffs.com) on a near hourly basis. The satellite data (infrared for sea surface temperature and ocean color for indices of phytoplankton, clarity, and colorized dissolved organic material) are received from a variety of sources including, but not limited to NASA, NOAA, and the European Space Agency. We also use data derived from drifting buoys and from satellite altimeters. The altimeters provide a very course resolution and the time delay (10 day mean) limits the data's utility. In addition,we also rely on climate data, analyses, and forecasts provided by Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society, known as IRI (http://portal.iri.columbia.edu/port/server.pt) and NOAA's climate prediction website ( www.cpc.noaa.gov/), as well as,the Florida State University Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies program (www.coaps.fsu.edu).

To read the complete ROFFS BBC Forecast click here.