The International Pole & Line Foundation is warning that new limits on fish aggregating devices (FADs) in the Indian Ocean are “dangerously high.”
The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission set the new limits at its recent meeting in Busan, Korea at the end of April. It allowed purse seine vessels to deploy up to 550 drifting FADs at once. It also allows vessels to purchase a maximum of 1,100 FADs annually to replace broken or lost units.
“This decision by the Commission tips the scales even more in favor of the large, industrialized purse seine fleet reliant on dFADS,” said Adam Baske, the foundation’s police and strategy advisor. “The smaller, more sustainable operators will find themselves unable to compete on every level.”
FADs are devices that consist of an object hanging from a buoy or other surface object, which attracts fish and prompts them to school and swim around them. Many are low-tech devices made from scraps of wood, but the foundation is warning that they often use GPS “and acoustic devices for estimating the amount of tuna underneath and around them.”
Activists such as the foundation have argued for years that FADs allow fishermen to pull too many fish out of the water and to threaten sharks, sea turtles and other protected species.
The foundation, in a statement, said purse seine fleets in the Western and central Pacific Ocean average only around 100 drifting FADs per vessel per year.
“Are we meant to bury our heads in the sand and believe that their catch is not the result of FADs when so many dFADs have been deployed?” said John Burton, the foundation’s chairman. “The supply chain needs proof because it would be morally and ethically unacceptable for a purse seiner to be allowed to fish unsustainably for what the market will see as a sustainable product. Such a scenario would defy all logic.”
