Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for Assessing the Status of Tuna Resources in Region or Sub-region Waters in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Oceanic fishes such as tunas are often found gathered around floating logs and other drifting objects, sometimes in very large numbers. Having observed this behavior, fishermen learned that they often had higher catches when they found floating objects and fished near them than when they fished in the open ocean. Some industrial fishing techniques rely on this tendency for tuna to gather near natural floating objects to improve their catch; many tonnes of tuna have sometimes been taken around even small bodies of floating debris.