User menu
The Indian Ocean supports the second largest tuna fishery in the world, with over 1 million tonnes caught annually. Here, coastal fisheries (operated by vessels < 24 m LoA exclusively fishing in the EEZ of their flag state) are of significant economic, social, and cultural importance to many states and account for an estimated 50 % of all landings, while using only ~25 % of the fuel and sustaining 25 times the number of livelihoods compared with industrial vessels.
However, a focus on advancements in data collection, science and policy for the industrial sector has largely overshadowed the impacts of coastal fisheries while the importance of developments in this sector is increasingly being realised. Coastal fisheries catches are often dominated by neritic tunas, however, data for these species is inaccurate, incomplete and not provided in timely fashion, resulting in large uncertainty over the status of many of these species and associated catches. There is no substitute for good data collection (Giron-Nava et al., 2020), and the lack of accurate catch and effort data has been identified as one of the greatest challenges facing the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) Scientific Committee.
The IOTC requires that all fisheries are subject to an onboard data recording system (logbook), with specific data requirements outlined in Resolution 15/01. While coastal fisheries from developing CPCs were originally exempt from this measure, in recognition of the challenges faced, the Resolution states that data collection should “be implemented progressively from 1 July 2016”. Yet this has still only been achieved by fraction of coastal states.
