The WCPFC—an international body composed of governments with fishing interests in the western and central Pacific Ocean—will hold its annual meeting on 1–5 December, 2014, in Apia, Samoa.
Bigeye’s big problem
The western and central Pacific is home to the world’s largest skipjack tuna fishery. A majority of this catch is made in association with FADs. According to an analysis by the Commission’s Scientific Committee, one-third of the tuna populations under its management are overfished and in need of rebuilding.
In 2013, fishing vessels landed 1.8 million metric tons of skipjack, the most commonly caught tuna species, and more than 82,000 metric tons of bigeye tuna, both records. In fact, overfishing of bigeye has continued for so many years that this population is at only 16 per cent of its unfished size.
The unmanaged proliferation of FADs is a major driver of bigeye overfishing. Juvenile fish, those too young to reproduce, regularly aggregate with skipjack and other species that form large schools around floating objects. Vessels using fish aggregating devices land 90 per cent of the bigeye caught in the region even though their intended catch is skipjack.
Trouble for sharks
Worldwide, about 100 million sharks are caught and killed in fisheries each year. Large-scale, industrial fishing has depleted several species that live in the open ocean, including silky, blue, and oceanic white-tip sharks. These top predators are known to congregate around FADs, and hundreds of thousands get caught up in nets along with tuna.
Sharks are also particularly vulnerable to getting caught by fishing vessels that use wire leaders and shark lines. Without an improvement in management, vulnerable sharks will continue to experience unsustainable pressure.
Solution?
Scientists report that more-effective management of FAD use is essential to rebuilding the bigeye tuna population and to reducing shark mortality. Taking steps to improve oversight of this fishing gear would also lead to increased transparency and accountability for vessels operating in the western and central Pacific.
To help western Pacific bigeye recover from overfishing, scientists have called for purse seine vessels, which use large nets to catch fish, to make a 36 per cent cut in the number of times they put their nets in the water around a FAD.
This reduction would likely allow many more juvenile bigeye to mature and ultimately reproduce, helping the population to recover. This would also reduce the number of silky, oceanic white-tip, and blue sharks caught incidentally by these vessels, a result known as bycatch.
A second way to manage fish aggregating devices is by simply capping the number of vessels that rely on them, or by limiting the number of floating objects that a vessel can deploy. In 2013, a record 297 boats fished for tuna in the Commission’s management area using purse seine gear, and most of these relied on FADs to locate fish.
This year, early reports indicate that the number continues to grow, with approximately 305 vessels expected to target tuna in the area.
