Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) has released a briefing on best practices for tuna fisheries employing longlines, which have been identified as have high bycatch rates for sharks, sea birds, sea turtles and marine mammals.
The report focuses on ways that longline fisheries can reduce bycatch and offers tuna buyers guidance on ways to insist that such practices are adopted.
SFP identifies examples of longline fisheries that have already adopted best practices and to encourage industry to press for these measures to be employed when sourcing tuna. Those include the Hawaii longline swordfish fishery, the U.S. Northeast distant fishery experiment (NED), the Australian eastern tuna and billfish fishery and Fiji longline.
Gear design, fishing methods and species occurrence can all reduce bycatch, according to SFP.
