Status of Indian Ocean Tuna Stocks

01 March 2009: Every year the Scientific Committee of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission produces  Executive Summaries of the status of the Indian Ocean tuna stocks. Executive Summaries gives most up to date review of what is known about the fishery, status of the stock and management recommendation with an outlook of the fishery. The reviews are based on scientific findings and assessments of the stocks undertaken in the various Working Parties.

Working Party on Tropical Tunas (WPTT) is a regular annual meeting of tuna scientists and stock assessment specialists in the region. Last year's meeting, held in Bangkok, Thailand, was of special significance and focused on the stock assessment of yellowfin tuna. The Group had access to large amounts of tag release and recapture data - thanks to the Regional Tuna Tagging Project - which provided critical information of movement, growth and fishing mortality for the assessment models. Armed with these additional data and using the state of the art MULTIFAN CL assessment techniques, scientist came up most plausible assessment of the yellowfin tuna stocks of the Indian Ocean. The results are reportred in the Scientific Report.

Here we have extracted from the 2009 Scientific Committee Report, the Executive Reviews of the Status of yellowfin, skipjack and bigeye tuna - the three most important species in the Maldivian tuna fishery.

Click on the url to download the sections of the report.

Executive Summary of the Status of the Yellowfin Tuna Resource (989 Kb)

Executive Summary of the Status of the Skipjack Tuna Resource (823 Kb)

Executive Summary of the Status of the Bigeye Tuna Resource (775 Kb)

Note: The complete Scientific Committee Report (2009)  is available at http://www.iotc.org

 

FAST FACTS

78091232809937bullet2.jpg Indian Ocean Tuna Commission was the forerunner of the erstwhile Indo-Pacific Tuna Development and Management Programme (IPTP) based in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

78091232809937bullet2.jpg IOTC was formally established on 27 March 1996, after long series of negotiations among the countries and international and regional organizations.

78091232809937bullet2.jpg A performance review of IOTC was undertaken in 2008 by an independent panel of experts. The report was submitted to the Commission in January 2009.