Fish aggregation devices

Our modern fishing fleets have come up with many tricks to have a good catch and run prosperous businesses. One of these are fish aggregating devices (FADs). The oceans are full of them! FADs usually look like rafts and are made out of tree logs and floats. Underneath the FADs, large nets (often rolled up) are attached with many colourful pieces of plastic. These FADs are floating fish magnets! FADs will soon start to attract fishes, as they are a refuge on the open oceans where there is just water. It starts with small fish, but soon bigger fish that feed on them will start to accumulate to. Entire ecosystems build up underneath these FADs, including many different fishes, sharks and turtles. Fishing fleets are interested in the tuna accumulating around these FADs. The FADs are equipped with a GPS beacon, so the ships can easily locate the FADs back after several months.

I have been on an expedition to document the life around FADs on the Indian Ocean, and I have seen firsthand the prosperous life around these man-made floats. I was in the water many times, and swam with yellowfin tuna, loggerhead turtles, oceanic whitetip sharks and silky sharks. The beautiful life forms around the FADs are breathtaking. It was painful to realise that big fishing boats will soon come to take out all this life at once, and all this beauty will be gone. The caught tuna are sold commercially, but all other fishes, sharks, and turtles are bycatch, and are often disregarded dead in the ocean. Not only have that FADs strongly contributed to overfishing of fishing stocks that are already way fast their limit, like tuna. And our modern European fishing fleets fish away all the fish in front of Africa’s coast, leaving little behind for the local population that is often extremely poor.

These selfish practices of European society need to change. These companies are only run for economic gain. We take from local people that need it the most. We take too much from the ocean, until the fish stocks and ecosystems cannot regenerate. We’re heading for a future with empty oceans, and FADs are contributing to this.

So what can we do? We consumers have the power. These companies only exist because of consumer demand. Never buy any fishes that are caught using FADs. Support local, small-scale fisheries that are sustainable and well-managed. It is the only way that we can have plenty of fish in the sea, also for generations to come.

by Judith Kok

*Main picture taken from Maldive Finest website