FADs increase bycatch in the skipjack tuna industry by between 500 and 1,000 percent when compared to nets set on free-swimming schools (FAD-free seining.) To make matters worse, between 15 and 20 percent of the total catch of a FAD-associated skipjack seine is actually juvenile yellowfin and bigeye - two species of tuna that are in serious trouble and cannot afford to have their young purloined before they ever have a chance to breed. They are similarly mesmerizing to sharks, billfish, and other animals - most notably juvenile yellowfin and bigeye tuna - that come swimming by wondering what all the fuss is about. The problem here is that FADs don’t just attract the target species of tuna (usually skipjack). After a few weeks at sea, a FAD can develop an entire ecosystem around it - which is wiped out entirely when the tuna boat returns and scoops the whole thing up in a seine net.
Small plants and polyps anchor themselves to the physical body of the FAD, small fish use it as a hiding place, and larger animals flock to it as a source of shade and as a fertile hunting ground. FADs work because fish in the open ocean find random flotsam absolutely captivating. They are generally attached to a radio beacon and can relay their position back to a given tuna boat. Fish aggregating devicesįish aggregating devices (aka FADs) are floating objects that tuna vessels cast adrift in the open ocean. Unfortunately, this has led to any number of nasty consequences, and those smiling bumblebees and luxuriating mermaids on the tuna cans at your neighborhood grocery store have done a great job covering them up … until now.Ī juvenile bigeye killed in a skipjack seine, and hundreds more under my feet. Chasing these schools around is a time- and resource-intensive process - especially with oil prices on the perpetual upswing - but the tuna industry has found a way to cut some pretty significant corners. It’s a challenging process for a number of reasons, not least of which is that most species of tuna are constantly on the move across the vastness of the open ocean. Here’s the issue: Catching tuna in a manner that keeps the price hovering around $1-$2 per can is difficult. Although it has recently lost pole position to farmed shrimp, it is still massively popular, and even though it’s in a can, it is still fish, and thus merits scrutiny in terms of sustainable practices - or, in this case, its total lack thereof. Americans buy a tremendous amount of our seafood from the shelves of our local grocer rather than from the freezers, including one particular item that we put in everything from sandwiches to casseroles to salads: tuna fish.įor decades, tuna was the most widely consumed seafood product in the United States. Seafood isn’t only sold in the seafood section.
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