Recommended Best Practices for FAD management in Tropical Tuna Purse Seine Fisheries. ISSF Technical Report 2019-11

Many industrial purse seiners use drifting Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) in tropical tuna fisheries.
Management of the FAD component of these fisheries has been increasingly the focus of Regional
Fishery Management Organizations and stakeholders such as ISSF. ISSF and other NGOs have put
together lists of the elements that they consider to be most important for effective management of
FADs. This paper expands upon the six elements of management that ISSF considers to be of utmost
importance: (i) Complying with flag state and RFMO reporting requirements by set type, (ii) voluntarily
reporting additional FAD buoy data for use by RFMO science bodies, (iii) supporting science-based
FAD limits, (iv) using non-entangling FADs to reduce ghost fishing, (v) mitigating other environmental
impacts due to FAD loss including through the use of biodegradable FADs and FAD recovery
policies, and, (vi) implementing further mitigation efforts for silky sharks. We provide practical
examples that fleets could adopt as their FAD management policies.

Also posted as IOTC-2021-WGFAD02-INF15