New Bay's Field Notes:

Welcome to the 2004 season...

New Bay's tag had not updated since Saturday and James was out listening for her today.  He did not hear anything but about 30 minutes ago a local resident of Apollo Beach called to say he had found her tag floating under his dock late this afternoon.  Bad news is that all the equipment was recovered, including the belt which sounds like it broke at the weaklink as designed. 

New Bay was a big girl in mass but had a tiny peduncle so we were not able to get her into a larger, stronger belt.  She had been equipped with the appropriate tether strength for her length so to not put too much pressure on the belt during a potential entanglement.  If you make the tether too strong, then the weaker area for breaking ends up being in the belt.  I would say she got hung up on something that had give to it instead of getting entangled on something stable.  That is when we have seen belts give in the past and not the tethers (i.e. net entanglements, drop nets, anchors).  The equipment did it's job but that means she no longer has any equipment on her for us to reattach to. 

Good news, is that she did move out and into TECO over the weekend.  

This was the last we saw of New Bay before she lost her tag...