Several lucky Florida crews found themselves in the land of plenty in January. That land being the fertile waters known as “the Pocket” immediately northwest of Chub Cay in the Berry Islands.

What caught the anglers interest was marlin. And according to those manning the cockpits of Hog Wild out of Stuart, Christina out of Palm Beach and Very Pushy out of St. Augustine and Savannah, Georgia, the blues “were chewin’.”

Hog Wild and Very Pushy logged multiple blue marlin releases, sometimes up to seven per day with an average of three to four billfish making it to the transom where excited crews sent them on their ways. The bite was so hot, Domenica out of Jupiter scored two blues while fast-trolling wahoo gear at 15 knots.

Counterfeit Fish Mislabeling of red snappers could suggest commercial overfishing.

Genetic tests indicate that 77 percent of fish sold as red snapper nationwide are other species incorrectly labeled as the popular entree, according to a new study that appeared in the journal Nature.

Scientists at the University of North Carolina sampled fish from eight states--Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina and Wisconsin. They found that of 22 samples from fish vendors, only five were actually red snapper. Some were other snappers, but more than half were from species from other parts of the world or deepwater fishes too rare to identify.

''Frankly, the sample size was too small to be extrapolated to a national level,” Linda Candler of the National Marine Fisheries Institute told USA Today. But because they found the same widespread mislabeling in each state studied, the researchers suspect a national problem. Even with a 17 percent margin of error, at least 60 percent and as many as 94 percent of the fish were mislabeled.

Marine biologists have long suspected that many fish in markets and restaurants are mislabeled. ''In general, market names may bear little resemblance to what the product really is,'' says Jane Lubchenco, a professor of marine biology at Oregon State University also told USA Today. Pointing out that the study only exposed the mislabeling, scientists stopped short of saying the practice of mislabeling less valuable species suggests commercial overfishing of red snappers.

FS