A Snapshot of the Tropical Tuna Purse Seine Large-Scale Fishing ...

Limiting the list to large-scale vessels as defined here excluded 810 vessels, resulting in
a total of 854 large-scale purse seiners with an overall estimated FHV of 870,000 m 3
(Table 3). Thus, defining large scale as 335 m 3 FHV and larger removed about 49% of
the vessels in numbers, but only removed 15% of the combined hold volume. The
Developing:Developed ratio of capacity increased to 1.28 in terms of numbers of vessels.
Table 3. Distribution of tuna purse seiners (≥ 335 m 3 FHV) by flag at the end of 2011. The entries
represent the number of vessels and their estimated combined FHV.
Flag Vessels FHV(m3) Flag Vessels FHV(m3) Flag Vessels FHV(m3)
ANT 3 4400 GRC 1 386 PAN 17 23006
AUS 7 4110 GTM 6 10402 PHL 76 56933
BLZ 7 9308 HRV 7 3245 PNG 10 8839
CHN 12 16258 IDN 41 23703 RUS 7 6121
CIV 1 871 IRN 8 11660 SLB 5 2147
COL 11 12566 ITA 30 15575 SLV 4 7892
CPV 5 4530 JPN 107 79114 SYC 8 18826
DZA 1 341 KIR 6 9377 THA 4 3950
ECU 69 66711 KOR 58 69392 TUN 9 3597
ESP 48 67423 LBY 4 1662 TUR 33 18308
FRA 41 42708 MAR 1 575 TUV 1 1937
FSM 7 5865 MEX 40 47145 TWN 34 45448
GBR 6 5781 MHL 10 11376 USA 38 57711
GHA 15 17332 NIC 6 8722 VEN 24 27922
GIN 3 2025 NZL 5 6129 VUT 18 28760
Total 854 870092
Developed 375 393778
Other 479 476314
Oth:Dev 1.28 1.21
3.6 The large-scale tropical tuna purse seine tuna fleet
The RFMO lists include purse seine vessels that fish for bluefin tuna either permanently
or sporadically. This is specially the case for the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean
bluefin stock managed by ICCAT. Since the Commission established strict controls over
vessels starting in 2006, the ICCAT record became populated with many small purse
seiners that fish typically for small coastal pelagics. However they may catch bluefin
occasionally, so they are registered "just in case." In addition, the WCPFC record
includes many Japanese purse seiners which operate north of 20°N and do not usually
target tropical tunas.
In consultation with members from the industry and several agencies, the following
vessels were excluded:
- Vessels flagged to Mediterranean countries (other than Spain and France) and
Great Britain;
- Vessels flagged to Spain and France that are only authorized on the ICCAT
record and are not on the TURBOBAT database.
- Vessels flagged to Japan that are on the WCPFC record but not the FFA record;
Removing these resulted in 678 large-scale, tropical tuna purse seine vessels with a
combined hold volume of 781,000 m 3 (Table 4). Compared to the previous list (all
large-scale purse seiners), these are reductions of 21% and 10% in number of vessels
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