Commercial Confidentiality or Avoiding Accountability: the Need for Greater Transparency in Drifting FAD Operations | IOTC

It is clear that the express use of drifting fish aggregating devices (dFADs) is the most efficient means of catching tuna in tropical oceans. Of the global catch of five million tonnes in recent years some 40% were caught exclusively by purse seining around aggregations under dFADs (ISSF, 2021). dFADs are known for their ecological (juveniles and bycatch) and ecosystem impacts (ghost fishing and plastic pollution) and yet their regulations are inadequate (Davies et al, 2014, Hanich et al, 2019). Close to 90% of dFAD deployments are never retrieved (Escalle et al, 2021). They are abandoned (deactivated), lost, discarded, sunk, or end up stranded in sensitive coastal waters. This lack of effective FAD management is largely due to the lack of FAD-tracking data, protected by the fishing companies under the guise of commercial confidentiality. This lack of transparency impedes scientific research and collaboration for developing science-based conservation and management measures of FADs. In the process, conservation and management proposals on dFAD are seen as a confrontation between the coastal states and the distant water fishing nations.