By Samantha Farquhar and Guillermo Gomez (SMEA Alum, 1982)

Tuna is the world’s most lucrative fishery, accounting for $42.2B in revenue in 2016. As the demand for tuna has increased, so has the innovation in catching. Now more than ever, members of the tuna industry are using Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) to attract and capture tuna.

FADs are man-made structures that are set adrift or anchored in the otherwise open sea. These structures attract small bait fish which consequently brings larger predatory fish. In just a three to five weeks after a FAD is deployed, a large school of tuna can be found at a FAD, making for easy fishing.

While FADs have been used for centuries, increased demand for tuna has led to increased use of FADs. The issue now is that as FADs become more prevalently used, they’re also largely unregulated. Large tuna vessels deploy thousands of FADs equipped with solar-powered tracking devices and sonar that can be remotely monitored. When vessels see that a large number of tuna is present at one of their FADs, they travel to the location of the FAD and capture the tuna by purse seine. In 2014, it was reported that nearly 65% of the total global purse seine tuna catch was made by fishing on floating objects. In 2015, Pew estimated up to 121,000 FADs were deployed globally. This number is likely to have increased since.

While FADs have indeed helped fishermen discover more tuna fishing grounds, land more fish, and waste less fuel and effort, there is concern for the ecological impacts of using such technology. Because FADs attract a variety of fishes, often other species and juvenile fish are caught incidentally. Furthermore, if FADs are abandoned at sea, they contribute to the global problem of marine debris and can even entangle wildlife specifically sharks and sea turtles. Some also worry that FADs can alter the migration patterns of some tuna species.

Another issue that can arise with FADs is that of ownership. Sometimes, tuna vessels will encounter a FAD set by another vessel, fish on it, then claim the FAD as their own. The vessels then replace the tracking buoy on the FAD with their own and throw the old satellite tracker, still active, back into the sea to deceive the original vessel that initially set the FAD. This varies drastically from many other fisheries where the gear is considered the property of the respective vessel and it is illegal to harass others’ gear. The tuna fishery operates largely on a “first come, first serve basis” so the first boat arriving on a FAD has the right to fish. However, this has led to conflict at sea with vessels purposely sabotaging the sets of others by getting in the way of the purse seine maneuver.

So, when trying to answer the question: Are FADs bad? The answer is: we don’t know yet. This is largely because there is very little data on how many and where FADs are being used, nor on their long-term ecological impacts. While major satellite companies and buoy manufacturers do have this data, it is private. However, various tuna commissions around the world are trying to improve the reporting measures for FADs so that better management decisions can be made. For example, in 2015, the EU tuna fleet put a limit on the number of FADs a vessel can use. There are also some areas in the Pacific that are closed to FAD fishing by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). In 2017, the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) resolution adopted a resolution that requires location reporting of FADs. Additionally, recent research has been funded to explore the use of biodegradable FADs that would decrease marine life entanglements and marine debris. Similarly, the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) is currently researching and promoting non-entangling FADs. It is these new regulations and innovations that will allow us to better understand the implications of FADs and their long-term effects.

Image 1 is courtesy of Alex Hofford/Greenpeace, and image 2 is courtesy of ISSF.