Free School Fishery Trends for Spanish Tropical Purse Seiners in the Indian Ocean

This document provides an update of the statistics of the Spanish purse seine fleet fishing in the Indian Ocean for the period 1990 to 2018, focusing on setting on tuna free schools. Catch and effort statistics, as well as some fishery indicators by species and fishing mode, are included in the analysis. In recent years, there has been a substantial change in the set ratio trends by type of school. This period is coinciding with the establishment of yellowfin tuna stock recovery plan with the aim to reduce their catches by 15% compared to the 2014 level . Thus, in the previous years, there was a ratio around of five sets on log schools for each set on free school. During the last year, this ratio has changed, reaching 25 sets on log schools for each set on free school. This operational change in the behavior of the fleet is an inflection point in the trends from time series.