Purse Seine Guidebook
1. Avoid Bycatch: Before Fishing or Setting the Net
The first and most effective step is to avoid bycatch entirely. This involves preventing bycatch before a vessel even reaches a fishing area or approaches a Fish Aggregating Device (FAD).
Strategies include, for example, using fully non-entangling FADs, which reduce the risk of entangling vulnerable species such as sharks and turtles (see section on FAD structure impacts); avoiding known bycatch hot spots through adaptive time-area closures; and employing acoustic species discrimination technologies.
The latter enables fishers to remotely assess, via echosounder buoys, the species and size composition of tuna aggregations beneath a FAD, allowing them to avoid both navigating to and setting on FADs where undesired species or sizes are present.
Scientist studying fish behavior. ISSF bycatch research cruise in the western Pacific, 2014. Photo: Fabien Forget (ISSF)