The Palmyra Atoll FAD Watch Program – an initiative of Arlington, Virginia, U.S.A.-based global environmental nonprofit The Nature Conservancy (TNC) – has more than doubled the vessels participating in its program to 19 and has increased the size of the geofence it uses to collect biomass data near the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument.
The program is the first drifting fish-aggregating device (dFAD) partnership in the Pacific Ocean, and its goal is to remove dFADs before they can harm sensitive and protected marine areas surrounding the Palmyra Atoll.
Among a handful of partnerships, the Asociación de Grandes Atuneros Congeladores (AGAC) – a Spanish purse-seine fleet company – is one of the most recent to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the program. The MOU outlines a commitment for both entities to jointly protect the atoll, according to a press release.
“The collaborators I’ve worked with, I’m convinced that they genuinely do care and are interested in dFAD management and keeping them off the reef. They don’t want to lose their fishing gear and don’t want to destroy coral,” Pelagic Conservation Strategy Lead with TNC's Climate Adaptation and Resilience Laboratory Kydd Pollock said. “I feel comfortable saying that I really do believe it because of the communication that I’ve had with them. It’s in their interest to keep these FADs off the islands, but obviously, they have no control over the current.”
The Palmyra Atoll FAD Watch Program was founded in May 2021 with a signed MOU between TNC and the U.S. tuna purse-seine fleet, which was quickly followed by a June 2021 MOU with Cape Fisheries to establish a six-mile ring around Palmyra, in which dFADs entering the area can be swiftly recovered by the program.
“My main focus from that point was to have very clear and transparent communication with our collaborators,” Pollock said. “For the first year, my focus was transparency, very open communication, and building trust.”
The Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission estimates that 46,000 to 65,000 dFADs are deployed annually in the Pacific Ocean – a body of water that is home to the largest tropical tuna purse-seine fishery in the world with 262 vessels active in 2021 and annual catch from these vessels valued at USD 2.5 billion (EUR 2.2 billion). About 7 to 10 percent of dFADs drift away from the fishing grounds, making retrieval of these devices a costly endeavor that companies often do not pursue.
When a dFAD ends up near Pacific islands, the tail of the device often snags surrounding reefs first and drags across them until it is severed from the raft. This can severely damage fragile reefs and, when made of synthetic materials, devices get hung up and remain in these sensitive environments for long periods of time.
Pollock has worked to remove dFAD debris from Palmyra’s reefs, lagoons, and beaches since 2008.
“Once the raft goes over the reef crest and into the back reef, where it’s relatively still, the currents can still push it … through the really fragile staghorn coral. It will just literally bulldoze a square or rectangle track right through the coral until it comes to a halt somewhere like a beach,” Pollock said.
In 2022, both Cape Fisheries and TNC opted to continue their collaboration and agreed to set the tracking of dFADs to every four hours, instead of the previous timeline of every 24 hours.
“I don’t want to take their fishing equipment for no reason. With that four-hour tracking, I could allow those FADs to get closer than six miles to Palmyra before it becomes evident that this dFAD is going to ground or drift off,” Pollock said. “It allowed me to be more selective with the dFADs I took from the fishing industry, and that portion is really important to me because being an NGO, but also being a fisherman, I want to find a balance there.”
The companies have also granted the program access to biomass data from the dFADs, which helps ensure that fisheries data remains accurate and timely.
If a device has to be collected by the program, the aim is to repurpose these dFADs to improve local food security in such communities as Micronesia and Polynesia, rather than return them to the companies for further use near sensitive reefs.
The collaboration is a win-win, according to TNC, as it protects the richly biodiverse waters around Palmyra and provides the participating companies a letter that can be submitted to regional fisheries management organizations and MRAG Americas showing they have engaged in collaboration beyond what is mandatory, thus improving their status with these bodies. This, in turn, enhances their selling ability and price level of the fish they sell, according to TNC, which also helps to publicize their collaboration to show their products are an environmentally friendly choice when purchasing seafood.
“I appreciate that this massive fishing conglomerate is providing this kind of data and collaboration to a nonprofit organization – a conservation organization,” Pollock said. “It shows me how committed they are to better dFAD management.”
Photo courtesy of JDL USCG/Shutterstock
