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Evaluation of FAD-associated purse seine fishery reduction strategies for bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus) in the Indian Ocean

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Abstract

In the Indian Ocean, bigeye tuna supports one of the most important fisheries in the world. This fishery mainly consists of two components: longline and purse seine fisheries. Evidence of overfishing and stock depletion of bigeye tuna calls for an evaluation of alternative management strategies. Using an age-structured operating model, parameterized with the results derived in a recent stock assessment, we evaluated the effectiveness of applying constant fishing mortality (CF) and quasi-constant fishing mortality (QCF) strategies to reduce fishing effort of purse seining with fish aggregating devices (FADs) at different rates. Three different levels of productivity accounted for the uncertainty in our understanding of stock productivity. The study shows that the results of CF and QCF are similar. Average SSB and catch during simulation years would be higher if fishing mortality of FAD-associated purse seining was reduced rapidly. The banning or rapid reduction of purse seining with FAD resulted in a mean catch, and catch in the last simulation year, higher than that of the base case in which no change was made to the purse seine fishery. This could be caused by growth overfishing by purse seine fisheries with FADs according to the per-recruit analysis. These differences would be more obvious when stock productivity was low. Transferring efforts of FAD-associated purse seining to longline fisheries is also not feasible. Our study suggests that changes are necessary to improve the performance of the current management strategy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Marine Sciences, Shanghai Ocean University, Shanghai, 201306, China

    Yuhe Tong  (童玉和), Xinjun Chen  (陈新军) & Liuxiong Xu  (许柳雄)

  2. Key Laboratory of Sustainable Exploitation of Oceanic Fisheries, Ministry of Education, Shanghai, 201306, China

    Xinjun Chen  (陈新军), Liuxiong Xu  (许柳雄) & Yong Chen  (陈勇)

  3. School of Marine Sciences, University of Maine, Orono, ME, 04469, USA

    Yong Chen  (陈勇)

  4. Hainan Provincial Fisheries Research Institute, Haikou, 570206, China

    Yuhe Tong  (童玉和)

Authors
  1. Yuhe Tong  (童玉和)
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  2. Xinjun Chen  (陈新军)
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  3. Liuxiong Xu  (许柳雄)
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  4. Yong Chen  (陈勇)
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xinjun Chen  (陈新军).

Additional information

Supported by the Shanghai Ocean University Graduate School (PhD Dissertation Grant), the Project of Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation (No. 12231203900), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. NSFC41276156), the Industrialization Program of the National Development and Reform Commission (No. 2159999), the Shanghai Leading Academic Discipline Project, the National Distant-water Fisheries Engineering Research Center, the Scientific Observing and Experimental Station of Oceanic Fishery Resources, Ministry of Agriculture, China. Y. Chen’s involvement in the project was supported by the Shanghai Leading Teacher Program

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Tong, Y., Chen, X., Xu, L. et al. Evaluation of FAD-associated purse seine fishery reduction strategies for bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus) in the Indian Ocean. Chin. J. Ocean. Limnol. 31, 724–736 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-013-2171-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-013-2171-6

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