FAD Watch (And It’s Not About Trendy Fashion)
Date: Tuesday, 31 August 2009
Location: High Seas Area 1, Western Pacific Ocean
Weather conditions: Sunny day, clear skies, light breeze
Objective: To look out for FADs
A few days ago, we arrived in the High Seas of the Pacific. Since yesterday, we have been on constant watch, scanning the horizon by day, the radar by night, diligently on the look-out for FADs and fishing boats.
Up in the bridge, Gabriel (one of our dive team, and resident shark expert) was the first to go on FAD watch at 8 in the morning. And, lo and behold, you guessed it … he spotted the very thing we were looking for *ndash; a FAD!
What’s a FAD, you ask? For the unfamiliar, FAD stands for Fish Aggregating Device. Like a magnet, FADs are designed to attract tuna into an set area. The fish are then caught by industrial purse seiners. These devices not only attract tuna, but also a host of other species such as sharks, turtles and other fish.
These FADs float at sea until they have attracted a sizable enough population of tuna. Once enough tuna are attracted, the fish and all other accumulated marine life is scooped up in a huge net, in one fell swoop. It’s a very wasteful way of fishing.
The irony of the situation is that we have found this FAD right in the middle of a two-month ban, from 1 August to 30 September. The ban was declared by the Pacific Tuna Commission, which manages tuna fishing in the international waters of the region.
So there I was walking around, a sleepy zombie, until I snapped awake when someone told me we’d found a FAD. There was a general hubbub going on around me. Deckies were by the inflatables, getting ready to launch them. The divers were checking their dive equipment and gearing up in the wet room. Breakfast was a distant memory of wolfing down one buttered toast as I hurried to catch the action. It was the same general excitement when I went up the bridge, the campaign team were complete and two binoculars were trained on the bobbing FAD.
The African Queen (one of our inflatable boats) sped to the bobbing FAD. Our divers soon discovered that schools of fish had already gathered around it.
As well as sharks, some of them juvenile too!
Normally, these FADs act like deadly fish magnets. But these critters were spared the usual fate that befalls the marine life lured to them. Instead, it was the FAD itself that we fished out of the water. It turned out to be a floating drum, looking very much like a huge brown crayon, caked with rust, barnacles and containing some small fish annoyed to be (temporarily) taken out of the water.
Greenpeace/Hilton Finding this FAD was both good and bad at the same time. Good, because we were able to find one and confiscate it, but bad because this is a wasteful practice used by industrial fishing companies to increase their tuna catch, and despite the ban in place, we still found one.
If the use of FADs continues, tuna stocks face a grim future in the region, and other marine life (such as sharks and turtles) will continue to become the unintended casualties of industrial fishing.
For Gabriel, the reward for his early-morning FAD spotting was the chance to get into the water with some of his sharky friends, and to know they are - at least for now - safe from harm.
Images: Greenpeace/Hilton
September 3rd, 2009 at 1:54 am
Wow, great work! And such amazing images too. Thanks for the update, and keep givin’ em hell!
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Didn’t know about FADS til your report but now I do I will spread the message about their use in unethical and unsustainable fishing. Too bad the world governing bodies do nothing about local and international overfishing and its left to NGO’s and the ordinary joe to fly the flag for creatures great and small. The time is ticking close towards 12 o’clock on the fishing stocks of the world !
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Thanks for your hard work on our behalf…and that of the fishes that are threatened. Much appreciated. Commercial interests have long been pursuing over-fishing and the current situation is the result. Hopefully it’s not too late to ‘turn the tide’!
September 3rd, 2009 at 4:33 pm
How exactly do these FAD’s work? Is it because fish are inquisitive or something else?, Chris.
September 3rd, 2009 at 5:14 pm
thanks for the update - wondered what was going on re Tuna Fishing. Thank God for folk like you keeping tabs on all the creeps out there who are always doing the wrong thing. Great photos.
September 3rd, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Well done for confiscating this device. Does this herald the return of direct acions against international pirates such as Japans commecial whalers?
September 4th, 2009 at 4:56 am
Awesome work guys, pitty you don’t have a license to assassinate these bastards too!
September 4th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Comment
(1) I was under the impression FAD stood for fish attracting device!
Question
(1) i thought they used ropes to connect the FADs to a fixed location? i do not see a Rope! This being the case do commercial fisherman travel the ocean keeping a look out for these floating objects? if this is the case how dod you know thses items are FAD’s.
Cheers dave
September 4th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Well done! You are heroes.
September 4th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Dave,
FADs attract fish, so in that case you are also correct. But the correct terminology is aggregating
FADs can take any form, a wooden raft, floating barrels, etc. In fact some of them are attached to the bottom by ropes but when the waters are too deep to allow for anchoring, fishermen attach radio beacons on them so that they are easier to locate. And yes these commercial fishing vessels travel to the ocean to keep track of their FADs.
Mary Ann
September 4th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Andrew B,
Hehe, Greenpeace practices non-violence
Mary Ann
September 5th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Here’s a good description of the problems caused by FADs… basically the attraction to the FAD overrides the more sensible survival instincts of the fish, and they end up in unsuitable waters, distracted from their natural migratory paths, and of course in danger from fishing vessels that come back to scoop up what their FAD has attracted.
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/InNews/aggregation2008.html
It pretty much explains why they are aptly referred to as “deadly fish magnets”
As for the ropes and mooring, there are many different designs of FADs, some anchored and some drifting. This one we believe had come loose from being anchored, as it had the same “body” as others we have found, still attached. They are something like this: http://www.fao.org/docrep/field/31096705.gif
September 5th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Here’s a great quote about the bycatch from tuna fishing, which is worse around FADs:
“Killed alongside the skipjack tuna that finds itself in your tin is almost the entire cast list of
Finding Nemo.” - Charles Clover, the End of the Line
PS the book has now been made into a movie if you get a chance to see it, it’s well worth it!
http://endoftheline.com/
September 7th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Why are they all so mean its Horrifying, why does killing animals always feel like the right thing to do when its not they have lifes too.
September 7th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Does anyone know how FADs attract fish?
September 7th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
You can read about how FADs attract fish at: http://www.greenpeace.org.au/blog/energy/?p=801