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The document provides an overview of the knowledge of fisheries catching albacore (Thunnus alalunga) in the Indian Ocean since the early 1950s from a range of data sets collected by the Contracting Parties and Cooperating Non-Contracting Parties (CPCs) of the IOTC. Fisheries statistics available indicate that albacore has been essentially caught by large-scale longline fisheries over the last decades which are composed of a combination of deep-freezing longliners, which also target bigeye tuna and yellowfin for the sashimi market, and “fresh” longliners, which mostly target albacore for the canning market. Catches of albacore showed an increasing trend over time and amounted to about 40,000 t in recent years. Little information is available on discarding practices of albacore in industrial longline fisheries but the literature and few data sets collected through the IOTC Regional Observer Scheme suggest that discard levels are small regarding the high market value of the species. Furthermore, discarding is considered to be negligible in the coastal line fisheries catching albacore. The information available on geo-referenced catch, effort, and size composition shows strong, consistent spatial patterns in the distribution of the fisheries across the Indian Ocean. During the last decade (2010-2019), hotspots appeared to have emerged in the fishing grounds east of Mozambique (including their adjacent high seas), in the southeastern waters of Indonesia, and in the high seas south of 25°S in the southwestern Indian Ocean. This latter area now represents the main fishing grounds of Indian Ocean albacore, with most of the catch in recent years coming from longline fisheries operating between 40-80°E and 10-40°S. Size data mainly collected onboard longliners from Taiwan,China show that the larger individuals are mostly caught in tropical waters while their smaller counterparts mostly occur in the south of the Indian Ocean.
