Progress on the code of good practices on the tropical tuna purse seine fishery in the atlantic ocean

The two Spanish tuna purse seiner associations, ANABAC and OPAGAC, established a voluntary agreement for the application of good practices to minimize the ecosystem impacts of purse seine fishing, by reducing mortality of incidental catch of sensitive species and the use of non-entangling FADs. This paper presents results on the use of FADs and sensitive fauna release for the period 2015 and 2017 in the Atlantic Ocean. More than 600 trips were monitored in 28 purse seiners and 8 support vessels by human observers onboard or by electronic monitoring system. Results show that the percentage of entangling FADs is nowadays a residual component, being the 81.3% of the FADs left at sea non-entangling FADs (i.e. totally constructed with not meshed material or ≤7 cm mesh size if open net is present). Overall, 37,468 vulnerable specimens were registered with a predominance of sharks (88% of the interactions). Sharks (other than whale sharks), mantas, rays and turtles are mainly released by hand from the deck. For mantas specific releasing tools are also used. Bycatch release time has been reduced since 2015, which is an indicator of the increased commitment of the crew and could contribute to higher post-release survival rates.