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The Maldives has a coastal fishery targeting surface schooling tunas of mainly skipjack and yellowfin. An anchored array of fish aggregation devices (aFADs) deployed around the archipelago has been helping fishermen to locate tuna schools while improving efficiency of their pole- and-line fishing operations. The aFAD deployment program started in early 1980s, initially as a pilot, has grown and established to maintain a permanent array of about 50 aFADs, by re-deploying lost FADs at almost the same location. The aFAD program is managed exclusively by the government and so has maintained detail records of deployment; fabrication methods, marking, and of FAD attachments. More important are records of lost date and information about retrieval and reuse. We present here information for a case study of a well-managed aFAD program, which in general, follows FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines of Marking of Fishing Gear, and the Best Practice Framework for Fishing Gear set out by the Global Ghost Gear Initiative. On average 19 aFADs are lost on an annual basis, which are replaced soon after they are reported lost. Fishermen are financially incentivized to retrieve and return the detached or lost buoys. Roughly 8-10 buoys are returned on an annual basis making annual loss rate at 9-11 buoys. Based on these we estimate that 0.1 aFAD would be lost per 1,000 MT of fish caught in the fishery making this as a fishery with lowest abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear (ALDFG) footprint
