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The United Kingdom (BIOT) waters are a no take Marine Protected Area (MPA) to commercial fishing. Diego Garcia and its territorial waters are excluded from the MPA and include a recreational fishery. UK (BIOT) does not operate a flag registry and has no commercial tuna fleet or fishing port. The UK(BIOT) National Report summarises fishing in its recreational fishery in 2019 and provides details of research activities undertaken to date within the MPA.
The recreational fishery landed 8.7 tonnes of tuna and tuna like species on Diego Garcia in 2019. Principle target tuna species of the industrial fisheries (yellowfin and skipjack tunas, no bigeye were caught) contributed 34.7% of the total catch of tuna and tuna like species of the recreational fishery. Recognising that yellowfin tuna are currently overfished and subject to overfishing in the Indian Ocean and that Resolution 19/01 seeks to address this, UK(BIOT) have been taking action to reduce the number of yellowfin tuna caught in the BIOT recreational fishery and encouraging their live-release. Length frequency data were recorded for a sample of 211 yellowfin tuna from this fishery. The mean length was 89cm. Sharks caught in the recreational fishery are released alive.
IUU fishing remains one of the greatest threats to the BIOT ecosystem but a range of other threats exist including invasive and pest species, climate change, coastal change, disease, and pollution, included discarded fishing gear such as Fish Aggregating Devices. During 2019 the BIOT Environment Officer continued to take forward the current conservation priorities. In 2019/20 Recommendations of the Scientific Committee and those translated into Resolutions of the Commission have been implemented as appropriate by the BIOT Authorities and are reported.
