| Popis: |
Since the early 1990s, drifting Fish Aggregating Devices, or FADs, have rapidly become the dominant type of floating object used by the purse seine fishery in the Eastern Pacific Ocean to capture tunas. The development of this fishery for larger vessels is described using data collected by observers aboard vessels of more than 363 metric tons fish-carrying capacity. Bamboo rafts, equipped with radio-transmitters that allow for semi-continuous monitoring, are typically used as FADs. Old purse seine netting is often suspended below the bamboo raft to give the FAD an enhanced underwater profile. Similar to the fishery on flotsam between 1992-1998, most sets on FADs were made before 8 am, with skipjack and bigeye being the dominant tuna species caught, and yellowfin tuna captured in lesser amounts. Discard ratios of skipjack and bigeye were comparable for the two modes of fishing; however, the success rate on FADs for bigeye was more than twice that on non-FAD floating objects ("logs"). In addition, the fishery on logs was largely a coastal hshery, while the fishery on FADs extended west to 150 W, into areas that had not been significantly utilized by the purse seine fleet. The capture of tunas per set varied most with area, season and year. Nonetheless, capture per set for at least one of the three tuna species was also found to vary with the depth of the purse seine net and the amount of the netting hanging below the FAD. The effect of net depth and FAD depth on tuna capture varied by area, season and FAD color. |
