An update on best practices onboard french tropical tuna purse seiners of the Atlantic ocean

During the last decades, the issue of mortality of sensitive species incidentally caught by fishing vessels has become a major concern for the sustainability of fisheries. In 2012, the collaboration with French scientists of the French Institute for Research and Development (IRD) and Ifremer resulted in the first manual of safe handling and releasing techniques for sharks, whale sharks, rays and sea turtles (Poisson et al., 2012, 2014b). In 2020, a comprehensive assessment of the application of Best Practices onboard French and associated flag purse seiners of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans was carried out (Maufroy et al., 2020). This study was used to identify avenues for improvement, make changes to the OCUP observation program and implement new projects. This document (i) provides an overview of the evolution of best practices onboard these vessels (ii) presents the current approach to train fishing crews on best practices and (iii) presents the current approach to monitor best practices with onboard observers in the frame of the OCUP program.