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In Madagascar, industrial tuna fishing is carried out by longliners of less than 24 metres (between 14 and 17 metres) operating on the east coast. In 2020, the number of national longliners remained at 5 as in 2019. Since 2010, the techniques and methods have remained the same. In general, the vessels deploy between 800 and 1300 hooks per haul and make a relatively short trip of 4 to 7 days in order to keep the catch fresh when arriving at the landing ports of Sainte Marie and Toamasina. The programme of collecting fishing logs and sampling at the port of landing, implemented since 2014 for Sainte Marie and since August 2016 for Toamasina, allows us to have data on the size distribution of the species caught.
Longline catches vary from year to year and tend to decrease from 2010 to 2020. This variation is slightly proportional to that of the fishing effort (expressed in the number of hooks deployed) which in 2020 has decreased significantly. Influenced by the decrease in the number of active vessels since 2018 and obviously by the fishing effort in 2020, the average annual catch of longliners is decreasing with 318 tonnes. It is made up of 50% tuna, 19% swordfish, 12% sharks and 19% other species. The tuna catch is mainly made up of bigeye, albacore and yellowfin tuna.
With regard to the monitoring of landings of pelagic fish from small-scale and artisanal fishing in northern Madagascar, 31 landing sites have been covered since 2017. The fishing gears used are mainly gillnets, lines and longlines. For information, the average annual catch of small-scale fisheries is estimated at 6,200 tonnes over the last three years, of which tuna and related species make up 25% of the catch.
