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In 2020, the Mauritian tuna fleet consisted of 3 purse seiners, 1 supply vessel and 2 semi-industrial longliners. The three purse seiners are large freezer vessels having an overall length of 89.4 M each while the longliners are semi-industrial boats less than 24 Metres in length. The two semi-industrial longliners operated exclusively inside the Mauritius EEZ.
The two semi-industrial longliners undertook 10 fishing trips and a total of 129500 were deployed for 141 fishing days. The majority of the catch consisted of yellowfin (58%) and albacore (31%). Their total catch amounted to 58.2 tonnes with a CPUE of 0.45kg/ hook. It is to be noted that there has been a decrease in the number of longliners involved in the semi-industrial longline fishery from 15 in 2019 to only 2 in 2020.
The Mauritian purse seiners operated between latitudes 19oN to 11oS and longitudes 43o to 80oE. Total catch of the three purse seiners amounted to 20549t comprising of 47.4% yellowfin, 45.1% skipjack and 4% bigeye tuna for 668 positive sets out of a total of 692 sets. The Observer Programme was not conducted in 2020 as to abide to the precautionary measures put into place with regards to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sampling exercises were carried out on the catch unloaded from the semi-industrial, artisanal and purse seine fishery. A total of 3175 fishes were sampled for length frequency namely 296 for the artisanal fishery, 341 for the semi-industrial and 2538 for the purse seine fishery. Sampling exercises could be carried out on the Mauritian purse seiners only during their callings at Port Louis which explained the quantity of fish sampled.
