After a brief visit to Alijos rocks with intentions to grab a few yellowtail or other willing specimens for the stewpot, we continued underway for Clarion island enjoying a now tranquil ride and enlightening afternoon. Senior Scientist Kurt Schaefer, from the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), conducted an excellent seminar featuring life history and reproductive biology of yellowfin and bigeye tuna sharing many amazing facts about both these species previously unknown to all anglers present. Yesterday's seminar featured details about catch statistics, population statuses, and geographic distribution of the same species. We are all (especially I) looking forward to today's presentation planned to feature details of previous Royal Star tagging projects and the amazing data collected since tagging began in October 2002.

We will arrive at Clarion in the early a.m. tomorrow with huge expectations of the fishing to come. All anglers are presently putting the finishing touches on their equipment while we cover the final one hundred miles of ocean above Clarion island. We will keep you all informed providing the satellite connection remains intact.

Before fishing commences I want to extend our most gracious thanks to those who supported this visionary tagging project through donations for the purpose of purchasing electronic tags. Shimano Corporation, AFTCO, and SAC deserve majority credit as they were the ONLY venues, in addition to Royal Star, within the sport fishing industry that pledged financial support for this project. These fantastic organizations, well known for their support of marine research, deserve our full gratitude and complete acknowledgement for understanding, and supporting the significance of this project.

It is our hope now to reach our tagging goals for this voyage and we are set to begin that portion of our trip tomorrow.