Science and industry: partners at sea

Working to improve the sustainability of tuna fisheries requires the development and implementation of verifiable, science-based practices, commitments and international management measures. A scientific foundation is essential to inform these management decisions – without it, debates about fisheries management are simply campaign-driven and made to fit the respective agendas of varying interest groups. Over the past year, much attention has deservedly been given to the bigeye tuna fishery in the Western and Central Pacific region, what we know and don’t know about the potentially perilous situation there. As marine scientists, it’s our job to collect and analyze data to find answers to these unknowns.

Since 2011, the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) has conducted seven at-sea research cruises – almost all of which took place on working fishing vessels. These voyages are built on scientific research and aimed at finding techniques and procedures that would result in more selective fishing in purse seine fisheries, which means catching only what a vessel sets out to catch. Our focus on these research cruises is twofold: reducing the incidental catch of non-tuna species (also called bycatch, such as sharks) and better understanding and prediction of the catch composition of small bigeye tuna, a species currently overfished in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean.

Read the full article here.

Victor Restrepo is Chair of the ISSF Scientific Advisory Committee. Previously, he worked with the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). Dr. Restrepo holds a PhD in Population Dynamics from the University of Miami, as well as a BSc in Marine Science and Biology from the University of Miami.

Laurent Dagorn is member of the ISSF Scientific Advisory Committee and a Senior Scientist working for the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement in France. Dr. Dagorn coordinated two major EU funded projects on FADs. Dr. Dagorn holds a PhD in Fisheries Science from the ENSA Rennes (France), as well as an accreditation to supervise research (university degree for Senior Scientists) from the University of Perpignan.