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Pelagic longline and purse seine are the two main fishing methods used by Australian vessels to target tuna and billfish in the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) Area of Competence. The number of active longliners and levels of fishing effort have remained low since 2001 due to reduced profitability, primarily as a result of lower fish prices and higher operating costs. In 2017, three Australian longliners from the Western Tuna and Billfish Fishery and seven longliners from the Eastern Tuna and Billfish Fishery operated in the IOTC Area of Competence. They caught 18.6 t of albacore (Thunnus alalunga), 59.3 t of bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus), 65.3 t of yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares), 155.8 t of swordfish (Xiphius gladius) and 1.5 t of striped marlin (Kajikia audax). These catches represent approximately 12 per cent of the peak catches taken by Australian vessels fishing in the IOTC Area of Competence in 2001, for these five species combined. In 2017, 1.8 t of shark was landed by the Australian longline fleet operating in the IOTC Area of Competence and 10 184 sharks were discarded/released. In addition, 11.7 per cent of hooks deployed in the WTBF were observed with electronic monitoring in the 2017 calendar year. The catch of southern bluefin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) in the purse seine fishery was 3951 t in 2017. There was no skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis) caught by purse seine fishing.
