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- Title
Adjusting time-of-day and depth of fishing provides an economically viable solution to seabird bycatch in an albacore tuna longline fishery.
- Authors
Gilman, Eric; Evans, Tom; Pollard, Iain; Chaloupka, Milani
- Abstract
Marine megafauna exposed to fisheries bycatch belong to some of the most threatened taxonomic groups and include apex and mesopredators that contribute to ecosystem regulation. Fisheries bycatch is a major threat to the conservation of albatrosses, large petrels and other pelagic seabirds. Using data sourced from a fisheries electronic monitoring system, we assessed the effects of the time-of-day and relative depth of fishing on seabird and target species catch rates for a Pacific Ocean pelagic longline fishery that targets albacore tuna with an apparently high albatross bycatch rate. Using a Bayesian inference workflow with a spatially-explicit generalized additive mixed model for albacore tuna and generalized linear mixed regression models both for combined albatrosses and combined seabirds, we found that time-of-day and fishing depth did not significantly affect the target species catch rate while night-time deep setting had > 99% lower albatross and total seabird catch rates compared to both deep and shallow partial day-time sets. This provides the first evidence that night-time setting in combination with fishing deep reduces seabird catch risk and may be commercially viable in this and similar albacore tuna longline fisheries. Findings support evidence-informed interventions to reduce the mortality of threatened seabird bycatch species in pelagic longline fisheries.
- Subjects
BYCATCHES; TUNA fisheries; ELECTRONIC surveillance; FISHING; BAYESIAN field theory; ELECTRONIC systems
- Publication
Scientific Reports, 2023, p1
- ISSN
2045-2322
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1038/s41598-023-29616-7