Use of fish aggregators in Indian Ocean remains contentious due to concerns over exploitation
The 28th session of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission will discuss proposals to regulate the use of the devices, often deployed by international fleets.
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Anthony Raj is the owner and captain of a fishing boat that has been hunting tuna in the Indian Ocean for years.
He and his crew of 11 are preparing for a high seas fishing expedition later in May. It will take them hundreds of nautical miles away from their home in Thathoor, a coastal village in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
“The ocean is like our mother,” Raj tells Dialogue Earth. “Whenever we turn to it for sustenance, it never sends us back empty handed. This connection is real.”
When he next takes to the sea, Raj will also be party to a long-running scientific and political row over how tuna fishers should work.
Thousands of long-line fishers from coastal countries, like himself, find it difficult to locate tuna schools in the Indian Ocean’s vast expanse. The longer it takes them to do so, the longer they spend at sea, and the more it costs them.
But “chasing free-swimming tuna is a passion for us and we don’t mind if it takes a bit longer”, he says. “We do not use any deceptive methods like so many international fleets do.”
Raj is referring to artificial floating structures with hanging nets and tracking buoys. Some fishers deploy these “drifting fish aggregating devices”...
