Purse Seine Guidebook
FADs have become increasingly popular among the global tropical tuna purse-seine fleet. Fishing efficiency has improved through reduced operational costs and by enabling more efficient fishing in comparison to free schools. Today, sets on dFADs account for approximately 40% of global tuna catches. Given high and rising vessel fuel costs, the utilization of dFADs has become a necessary aspect of tuna production for the global canning industry.
Unfortunately, the rapid increase in FAD use has created several challenges for the fishing industry, primarily the need to understand and mitigate the negative impacts on both target and non-target species, such as higher bycatch rates. In addition, environmental concerns have emerged related to marine pollution and the stranding of lost, abandoned, or discarded dFADs in sensitive coastal and marine habitats.
Continuing education on this topic can help fishers to effectively apply improvements to maximize the benefits, and minimize the negative concerns, of FAD fishing. This knowledge could also prove useful in responding to recent anti-FAD campaigns promoted by certain environmental groups, who use both real and perceived problems of FAD fishing to encourage consumers to buy only free-school or pole-and-line-caught tuna.
Tuna RFMOs have made significant progress in adopting conservation and management measures related to FADs. At the same time, fishers have been actively engaged for years in testing and implementing solutions, including the development and trial of improved FAD designs to reduce the devices’ ecological footprint.
