User menu
The paper provides an overview of the information available on the dynamics of drifting Fish Aggregating Devices (DFADs) and DFAD-related fisheries operating in the Indian Ocean, based on satellite-tracked buoy data made available to the IOTC since January 2020. In 2021, catches from large-scale purse seiners on drifting floating objects (FOBs) amounted to 410,000 t, representing 86.6% of the total industrial purse seine catch, 76.4% of the total purse seine catch, and 35.1% of the total catch of Indian Ocean tropical tunas. Between January 2020 and December 2022, the daily number of distinct satellite-tracked buoys monitored by the large-scale purse seine fishery of the western Indian Ocean varied between a minimum of 8,208 and a maximum of 11,534. Initial points of buoy trajectories, which reflect both a combination of DFAD deployments and transfers of buoys on FOBs encountered at sea by the purse seiners and their support vessels, cover the main fishing grounds of the purse seine fishery of the western Indian ocean. Trajectories of FOBs derived from daily buoy positions over that period show that the median distance travelled by a FOB was 2,562 km with some of them that travelled more than 20,000 km during their time at sea. The daily number of buoys activated in the fishery was on average of 65 buoys per day during 2020-2022, with some large variability over the period. Since early January 2020, the cumulative number of buoys activated and attached to drifting FADs and natural floating objects has reached 25,690, 48,338, and 71,883 at the end of the months of December 2020, 2021, and 2022, respectively.
The Rev1 version includes a correction regarding the buoy data available from Korea at the Secretariat.
