A call to the Royal Star office on Valentine's day reached Tracy Toussaint, the office manager.

"We're picking up passengers as we speak," she told me. "Then, we're off on a tagging trip."

Last year about this time, the Star had a very successful tagging trip. Scientists and anglers aboard were able to mark several hundred fish, mostly yellowfin tuna and wahoo, with small "spaghetti" tags, and a few of the larger fish with archival tags, which record data for later analysis. Time, depth, temperature and global location are some of the data that can be retrieved and may be very helpful later.

Pictures and information are likely to come from the Star over the next couple of weeks.