Third progress report on tag deployments to investigate the post-release mortality of oceanic whitetip sharks discarded by EU purse seine and pelagic longline fisheries in the South West Indian Ocean (POREMO project)

In this third progress report, we again briefly present the context of the POREMO project funded by EU France (FEAMP Mesure 77, Data Collection Framework) for the development of appropriate IOTC conservation measures for both targeted and non-targeted large pelagic resources exploited by open ocean fisheries. The POREMO project specifically aims at quantifying the post release mortality of the oceanic whitetip shark Carcharhinus longimanus (OCS) caught as bycatch in the EU tuna purse seine and pelagic longline fisheries to assess the effectiveness of the OCS retention ban measure adopted in the IOTC Resolution 13/06. In this working paper we present activities done since the 14th WPEB (2018) regarding, in particular, the deployment of satellite tags (both miniPATs and sPATs) on OCS. Based on the tags reported data so far, the post release survival of the OCS is 100% for the pelagic longline, and 93% for the purse seine EU fisheries.