Status of the Purse Seine Bycatch Mitigation Project and research cruises funded by the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation with notes on the development of best practices for the live release of encircled animals

The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) is funding and implementing a research program to develop and test technical options to reduce bycatch resulting from large-scale purse seine fishing on FADs. A steering committee composed of research scientists representing expertise from all oceans is developing and conducting research cruises on chartered tuna purse seine vessels with expertise in FAD fishing. Representatives from national fishery organizations, the SPC and tuna RFMOs also contribute to the development and implementation of the research plan. The project concentrates on developing ways to reduce fishing mortality on bigeye tuna and pelagic sharks that are taken in association with FADs, while work on other species (turtles, miscellaneous finfish, small tuna) are also being addressed. Cruises will take place in all ocean areas that have large-scale tuna fisheries to test mitigation techniques under different oceanographic conditions that contribute to differences in catch composition, bycatch levels and aggregative behavior of tuna and bycatch between regions.

Research priorities and experiments are being developed with input from fishermen experienced in FAD fishing through a series of Skippers' Workshops that are being held in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific regions. Research cruises have been conducted in the Indian and Eastern Pacific Oceans during 2011. The project will also develop and disseminate a series of "best practices" for the safe handling and live release of bycatch, especially certain species of special concern such as whale sharks, oceanic sharks and marine turtles. Additional cruises have been proposed for the eastern Atlantic and western Pacific during early 2012. The project steering committee will meet in late August 2011 following SC7 to review outcomes and recommendations arising from the completed cruises useful for the planning of the 2012 Atlantic and Pacific cruises.