A socio-economic sustainability indicator for the basque tropical tuna purse-seine fleet with a FAD fishing strategy

Abstract

This article applies the Rapfish methodology, a non-parametric and multi-disciplinary technique, with the objective of defining and evaluating a Sustainability Index of the Basque purse-seine fleet, fishing tropical tunain the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. The estimated Sustainability Index for the fleet fishing in the Indian Ocean is above a critical sustainability threshold and improves between 1998 and 2009. The opposite occurs for the fleet in the Atlantic Ocean. The influence of the growing use of Fish Aggregating Devices on the behaviour of fishers in the Indian Ocean is also analysed.