Tropical tunas caught by the malagasy longliners in 2012

The longline fishing is one of a recent fishery practiced by Malagasy fishing fleets. Partial analyzes were made on their activities during the year 2012. VMS Positions, logbooks and observer data sampling were used for these analyzes.
Mapping of VMS positions shows that national longliners fishing zones focus in the North East of the EEZ.
For the year 2012, a slight decrease of the total catch was observed compared to the previous two
years (From 490 tons in 2010 to 388 in 2013 tons).
The description of the species composition of catches show the predominance of tropical tuna catch rate (45%) compared to other pelagic species such as billfishes, sharks ... In the Tropical tunas, the catch rate in Bigeye predominates (44%) followed by albacore (29%) and Yellowfin tuna (26%). The catch rate in Skipjack is very low (less than 1%).
The samples made by observers on board were used to calculate the average size of individual catches. Bigeye, Yellowfin, Albacore and Skipjack have respectively an average size of 116.51, 127.55, 105.82 and 63.08cm.