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Recovery at sea of abandoned, lost or discarded drifting fish aggregating devices

Nature Sustainability volume 5, pages 593–602 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Tropical tuna purse-seine fishing vessels contribute to abandoned, lost or discarded (ALD) fishing equipment by deploying large numbers of drifting Fish Aggregating Devices (dFADs). Here we analysed more than 80,000 dFAD trajectories (56,263 tracking buoys) in the Indian and Atlantic oceans from 2012 to 2018. We found that more than 40% of dFAD trajectories ultimately drifted away from fishing grounds, becoming ALD. About 20% of these lost dFADs passed within 50 km of major ports, indicating that port-based programmes could be effective in collecting ALD dFADs at sea. We also identified areas within the fishing grounds where most dFADs exit and where high-seas recovery could be valuable. For example, most dFADs leaving Indian Ocean fishing grounds along their eastern border at ~70° E, particularly in October–December, do not return to fishing grounds. Despite considerable logistical challenges, at-sea dFAD recovery offers promising options for reducing the ecological footprints of purse-seine fisheries.

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Fig. 1: Core fishing zones and dFAD densities.
Fig. 2: The fate of dFADs with respect to the fishing grounds.
Fig. 3: Monthly variability in the rate of dFADs definitively leaving the fishing grounds.
Fig. 4: Dominant directions followed by dFADs and the proportion of these dFADs that pass close to ports.
Fig. 5: dFADs at the border of fishing grounds that definitively leave fishing grounds and pass close to ports.

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Data availability

EU purse-seine fishing effort data were obtained from public catch-effort datasets available from the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (https://iotc.org/data/datasets/latest/CESurface) and the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (https://iccat.int/en/accesingdb.html).

Data on port locations, sizes and characteristics used in this paper were obtained from the World Port Index (WPI) database provided by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (https://msi.nga.mil/Publications/WPI).

Given the confidential nature of the dFAD trajectory data used in this paper, requests for data access should be addressed directly to the Ob7 (https://www.ob7.ird.fr/) pelagic ecosystem observatory using the email address: adm-dblp@ird.fr.

Code availability

All data analyses and visualization scripts are available as an Rmarkdown document by request to the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Research Project INNOV-FAD (European Maritime and Fisheries Fund, measure no. 39, OSIRIS #PFEA390017FA1000004 and France Filière Pêche), the European Research Project CECOFAD2 (Specific Contract No. 9 of EASME/EMFF/2016/008) and the Ob7 Exploited Tropical Pelagic Ecosystems Observatory of the IRD. We thank the Compagnie Française du Thon Océanique (CFTO), SAPMER and Via Océan for making their dFAD tracking data available; the Ob7, the pelagic ecosystem observatory of the IRD for data management and preparation; L. Floch for data preparation; L. Dagorn, D. Gaertner and A. Fonteneau for their constructive comments that greatly improved the contents of this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), Sète, France

    Taha Imzilen, Christophe Lett & David M. Kaplan

  2. MARBEC, Univ Montpellier, CNRS, Ifremer, IRD, Sète, France

    Taha Imzilen, Christophe Lett & David M. Kaplan

  3. Collège Doctoral, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France

    Taha Imzilen

  4. IRD, Victoria, Seychelles

    Emmanuel Chassot

  5. Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), C/O IOTC Secretariat, Blend Seychelles, Victoria, Mahé, Seychelles

    Emmanuel Chassot

  6. Organisation des Producteurs de thon congelé et surgelé (ORTHONGEL), Concarneau, France

    Alexandra Maufroy & Michel Goujon

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Contributions

T.I., C.L. and D.M.K. designed the study with significant advice and input from E.C.; T.I. and D.M.K. had primary responsibility for data collection, analyses and manuscript preparation; A.M. and M.G. provided insight on industry response to and potential buy-in for dFAD recovery programmes, and also provided feedback on the manuscript as a whole.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David M. Kaplan.

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Competing interests

All of the authors work for institutions that benefit from and work towards the sustainability of the tropical tuna purse-seine fisheries of the Indian and Atlantic oceans. The MARBEC laboratory at which T.I., C.L. and D.M.K. work has primary data management responsibility for fisheries data produced by French tropical tuna purse-seine fisheries and has a long history of contributing to the management of tuna fisheries. E.C. works for the IOTC, the regional fisheries management organization that is responsible for managing tuna fisheries in the Indian Ocean. A.M. and M.G. work for ORTHONGEL, an NGO representing the French tropical tuna purse-seine fishing industry.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Johann Bell, Lauriane Escalle and Jon Lopez for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Imzilen, T., Lett, C., Chassot, E. et al. Recovery at sea of abandoned, lost or discarded drifting fish aggregating devices. Nat Sustain 5, 593–602 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00883-y

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