Public Access / Fisheries Management

How are we managing our fisheries?

Catch Monitoring & Compliance Quota Management

Industrial Longliners Fishery

Industrial longline fisheries comprise of foreign longline vessels licensed to fish in Seychelles EEZ which started to be issued in the early 80’ and Seychelles registered vessels (Taiwanese origin) started operating in 1999. Presently Taiwan Province of China and Seychelles registered fleet are the primary industrial longline fleets licensed to operate in the Seychelles Waters.

The longline gear used by the industrial longliners consists of three basic components: the mainline, the branch line, and the baited hook. All these parts are adaptable for targeting specific species through changes in materials, lengths, and deployment strategies. Using small buoys and float lines to suspend the gear below the surface results in a pelagic longline set that targets large pelagic fishes, such as bigeye (Thunnus obesus), yellowfin (Thunnus albacares), and albacore (Thunnus alalunga), broadbill swordfish (Xiphias gladius), and other billfishes.

Data Collection

The main data sources for the longline fishery are logbooks, landings and transhipment declarations and length frequency forms. Those vessels almost never call into port Victoria, and their data are submitted to SFA electronically. Logbooks are distributed by SFA to all longliners either licensed to fish in the Seychelles EEZ or registered in Seychelles. All longliners licensed to fish inside of the Seychelles Exclusive Economic zone is under obligation to submit a logbook to the Seychelles Fishing Authority for the whole duration of their licensed period. The logbook details their daily catch and effort whilst inside of the Seychelles EEZ and state when they are outside the EEZ or in Port. Seychelles registered vessels are under obligation to submit a logbook detailing their daily activities, catch and effort wherever they operate throughout the validity of their registration period

In addition, a sampling protocol (self-reporting) with aim to collect information on the size distribution of the different species (tuna, billfish, and sharks) caught, to monitor the stock structure relative to time and strata, was set up by SFA in collaboration with Deep‐Sea Fisheries of Taiwan in June 2007. The sampling is carried out on Seychelles Flagged vessel by crew members. They measure the first 30 fish per each set hauls and record on a sampling form which is submitted to SFA by email on a weekly basis.

The data recorded are Vessel details, Date, Position, and the measurement for the first 30 fish by species. The measurement type varies by species as follows:

For Tuna species the Dorsal Fork Length (DFL) are taken
For swordfish, the Lower maxillary Fork length (LMFL) is recorded
For Sharks, the total length is recorded

Data Processing

Following data capture, a series of verifications are conducted on the data to exclude all possible data capture errors. Furthermore, the geographical locations of fishing activities reported data by the skipper is validated using VMS data. With VMS data available, the positions declared on logbook is crosschecked to eliminate data entry errors or to identify positions that that may have been falsify on the logbook. Finally, the data is processed to obtain the final estimated catches for the fishery. The estimated weight of the fish on the logbook is mostly reported for when the fish has been processed on board (e.g., headed, and gutted or gilled). The whole weight of the fish landed is estimated using conversion factor established and approved by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission.

For industrial longliners, each month covered in a logbook is considered as one logbook.
Readers should be aware that the longliners statistics represent only a small sample of longliners activity in the WIO because:
- Not all longliners in the WIO have a license to fish in the Seychelles EEZ and therefore are under no obligation to report to SFA.
- Some Distant Water Fishing Nations (DWFN) provide SFA with log sheets covering their activity in the entire Indian Ocean while others confine their report to the Seychelles EEZ only.

Maps showing the Zones of Indian Ocean for Longline fishery.

Purse Seine Fishery

Tuna purse seiners started exploratory fishing operation in Seychelles EEZ since the early 1980s. Commercial purse seining activities in the Seychelles EEZ began in 1984 when French and Spanish fleets moved from the tropical Atlantic to the Western Indian Ocean. The main fishing nation involve in purse seining in the WIO were those operating under the European Economic Community Agreement (French and Spanish). Seychelles registered purse seiners started fishing in 1991 and are currently of French and Spanish ownership.

Traditionally, purse seiners fished over free-swimming schools until the 1990s where changes were introduced to the fishing strategy of purse-seiners, with the extensive use of floating objects such as Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs). The composition of species and size resulting from this type of fishing varies considerably in comparison to traditional fishing over free schools, since skipjack is the main catch and there is a higher rate of smaller yellowfin and bigeye. The purse seine tuna fishery targets mostly surface swimming yellowfin and skipjack tuna.

In view of Port Victoria’s strategic location in the middle of the tuna fishing grounds, Port Victoria has become the most important tuna transhipment port in the Indian Ocean. Over 90% of catches of purse seiners licensed to fish inside the Seychelles EEZ are transhipped and landed in Port Victoria every year.

Data Collection

Data sources for tuna purse seiners are logbooks, transhipment, well plans and biological sampling. Logbooks are completed by the captains and contains record of the vessel’s daily activities submitted to SFA. The logbook must be completed by vessel’s captain for each trip undertaken during the period the vessel is registered as a Seychelles Flagged vessels for Seychelles flagged vessels and for the period of license for foreign vessels. All details must be filled in for each activity undertaken daily. Activity includes fishing sets and activities on FAD’s, and it must be completed before the boat docks at the end of each trip. When the vessels are not fishing, a blank logbook must be submitted to SFA for the non-fishing period stating reason for not fishing. It must be noted that the supply vessels, vessels assisting the purse seiners during their fishing trip, must also complete a similar logbook and submit to SFA.

Landing and transhipment information can be obtained from either the local representative (agent) of the vessel or the vessel owner. They provide details of unloaded catch for each vessel and each operation.

The well plans contain information on where the catches are stored on the vessel. This is important for the port sampling program.

The multi-species nature of tropical tuna surface fisheries (purse seine) gives rise to a series of difficulties at the time of estimating basic catch by species and catch by size statistics. Complications are mainly due on one hand to the unreliability of the weight and species composition declared on the logbooks (eye estimate of skippers) and to the tendencies of classifying landings into commercial categories, solely according to the sizes of individual rather than according to both size and species. For example, fish < 5kg often contains small yellowfin and bigeye as well as skipjacks but are often declared as skipjack only. To improve the accuracy of statistics for sound stock assessment, it is essential to implement a tuna-sampling programme. Biological sampling is carried out to simultaneously estimate the species composition (by counting and identifying each species) and the length frequency distribution (by measuring the individuals) of the catch. Using the logbooks and well plans, the fisheries technician decides, depending on established protocol the wells that are suitable for sampling. The criteria are:

types of association (free schools or FAD’s associated schools)
zone covered, (10 zones)
season (according to the quarter of the year)
weight class of individuals (< 5kg, 10 – 30 kg, >30kg etc.)

The wells to be sampled must contain fish that were; caught from the same type of association, same zone, and same season. Furthermore, priorities are set depending on zones and season previously covered. The final decision is then made on site, depending on which vessel or wells being unloaded at that time.

Data Processing

Following data capture, the data is verified to correct any data entry errors. VMS data are also used to validate activity positions declared on the logbook. Data capture, verification and validation are carried out using specialised software specially developed for the purse seine fishery.

Following the verification and validation procedures the data is then processed where the sampling data is used to correct the species composition declared on the Logbooks. Next a raising factor is computed by dividing the total landed/transhipped catches by the catches declared on the logbook per trip and that raising factor is applied to the logbook declaration to obtain the total catch for the fishery by geographical locations.

Readers should note that the total tuna transhipped in Port Victoria refers to the total volume of fish transhipped from purse seiners to reefers or to containers, whereas those landed are volume of fish landed in the port for further local processing or sale.
Vessels covered or active refer to vessels for which a logbook has been received and processed.
The total number of vessels licensed and covered may not correspond to the direct summing of number of vessels licensed or vessel covered by countries by month or by year. The reason for this is that a vessel may change licence from one country to another in the same month, hence counted under both countries for that month or year.
Where a trip is spread over two different years, e.g., December 2020 - January 2021, the catch up to December 2020 will be attributed to the year 2020 and the catch made in January 2021 will be attributed to the year 2021. However, the transhipment/landing will be attributed to the year 2021 when that transhipment/ landing occurs. Hence the difference between the total catch for the year and the total catch transhipped/ landed.

Maps showing the Zones of Indian Ocean for Purse seine fishery

Semi Industrial Longline Fishery

The semi-industrial sector comprises of the monofilament longline fishery operating around the Mahe plateaux which started in 1995. On average these vessels remain at sea for a period of 10 days, preserving their catches on ice. This fishery has been developed with the objective of relieving pressure from demersal resources by targeting pelagic fish in deep waters outside the continental plateaux.

The semi-industrial longline gear is used to target large pelagic fishes, such as broadbill swordfish (Xiphias gladius), bigeye (Thunnus obesus) and yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares). For trips targeting swordfish and tuna, bycatch (species not targeted but captured) of billfishes (istiophorid) such as marlins and sailfish and other species are also caught.

Data Collection

The semi-industrial longline fishery is monitored through a logbook system. Logbooks are distributed by SFA to all skippers of semi-industrial longliners and are collected by fisheries statistical technicians upon the arrivals of the vessel from its fishing trip. The logbook provides most of the fishing trip general information, and the day-by-day catch and effort information. Landing forms from fish processors and fish mongers are also collected for the trips and is used in data processing to obtain the actual catches of the fishery.

Data Processing

Artisanal Fishery

The artisanal fishery of the Seychelles is characterized by a wide variety of boats using different gears and catching various species within the Seychelles EEZ. The principal gears used by whalers and schooners are handlines, while the small boats use a multitude of gear combinations, including handlines, traps, encircling gill nets, beach seines and harpoons.

Small boats usually operate within 10 nm of the granitic islands, the ‘inshore’ area, and often in waters adjacent to the vessel mooring and landing sites used. Schooners and whalers target offshore banks and the outer islands, with catches often landed in Port Victoria, Providence Port, or the larger landing sites. Depending on the season and species targeted, whalers may also operate inshore and within or close to the strata where they are based.

All the artisanal fishing vessels target demersal resources such as Lutjanids (snappers), serranids (groupers), lethrinids (capitaines), Scombridae (notably the Indian mackerel), Siganidae (rabbitfish), Lethrinidae (emperors), Sphyraenidae (barracuda)and carangidaes (carangues). The catches supply the local market demand including hotels and restaurants and some species such as groupers and snappers are exported.

Data Collection

The artisanal fisheries are monitored by a Catch Assessment Survey (CAS) stratified geographically and by boat and gear type. The system is supplemented by data collection from companies that are involved in processing and export of catches from the artisanal fishery. It must be noted that currently the data does not include catches from Sport and recreational fishery.

The primary objective of the CAS is to collect catch, effort, and species composition data to enable timely monitoring and assessment of status and trends in the major artisanal fisheries. The main inner granitic islands of Mahé, Praslin and La Digue, where more than 99% of the population resides, are covered by the surveys. Area stratification is the same for all boat types, whereby the three main islands are further divided into seven strata in relation to the location of landing sites, as follows:

Mahé (4 strata)

MNW – Mahé northwest from Baie Ternay to Glacis
MNE – Mahé northeast from La Retraite to Petit Paris;
ME – Mahé east from Cascade to Anse Forban
MW – Mahé west from Takamaka to Port Glaud

Praslin/La Digue (3 strata);

PNE – Praslin northeast from Anse Boudin to Consolation
PNW – Praslin northwest from Anse Takamaka to Anse Lazio
LD – La Digue Island

Nested within these strata are a total of 39 landing sites. Landing sites are divided into primary and secondary levels depending on the number of boats and catch landed at the site. A wide variety of species are monitored by the CAS and are collected disaggregated by species.

Fisheries technicians complete 5 types of forms;

Weekly record form: To collect information of all vessel’s activities based at the site by vessel registration number, their activity, gear type and targeted species.
Trip and Effort Form: Trip and effort information are collected through interviews of the fishermen and includes trip dates and time, effort, gear type and number, expenses, and geographical information,
Catch sampling form: The Catch and Effort forms are completed for each boat sampled. The catch from each boat sampled is weighed and recorded by species. If the catch is landed in packets, a maximum of 5 packets per vessel must be weighed for each species-group and the total number of packets must be recorded. In the case of mixed packets, the weight corresponds to the dominant species-group in the packet. Where catches are landed as single units of fish, as many fish as possible must be weighed and recorded for each species-group, and the total number of fish is recorded by species. Samples must always be taken in a random manner. For any boat sampled, the technician must be present at the landing site so that the totality of the catch for the boat is estimate.
Sales form: For sales information.
Biological Sampling form: For length frequency data collection

The technicians work 6 days a week and are timetabled for 1 day off during the week on Sunday. A total of 39 sites are monitored each week, including 12 primary and 27 secondary sites where two secondary sites may be covered by a one technician during a day, whereas each technician covers a single primary site each day.

Data Processing

The collected data are captured in the Allegro database and is then processed to obtain the total estimated catch for the artisanal fishery. The data is first used to reconstruct the monthly activity calendar of each vessels using the vessel activity information recorded by the technicians on site and VMS data. All the vessels fishing trips, are then consolidated in the summary file which is then used for estimating total fishing effort and catches. Estimation of fishing effort and catches is calculated by means of data extrapolation. The samples catch and effort data are extrapolated to the total reconstructed fishing trips to obtain an estimate of total Catches, effort, and species composition for the artisanal Fishery by vessel type, landing sites, gear type and month.

The catches for artisanal fishery presented here may be slightly different to previously published figures since data previously published as dropline catches has been revised and published as ‘Others’ to include catches for gears not previously captured by the Artfish software notably dropline, reels and hoop and tangled net. Such gears are mostly used by schooner vessels and Semi-industrial longliners conducting artisanal fishing trips. Hence the catches for schooners may be slightly different to that previously published.

Sea Cucumber Fishery

Sea cucumber harvesting in Seychelles dates to the early 1800s, but the fisheries remained small scale until the late 1990s, when a rapid increase in catch was observed. The increase in demand and price for “beche-de-mer” (dried body wall) led to an evolution in the fishery from the collector type, where fishers collected on foot in shallow areas, to the use of scuba gears as they moved to deeper areas. The higher value species are White teatfish (Holothuria fuscogilva), Black teatfish (Holothuria nobilis) and Flower teatfish (Holothuria. spp. (type “Pentard”). Prior to 1999, the fishery was open to all with no management restrictions in place. Declines in catch raised concerns about potential overexploitation of the resources, prompting the establishment of management measures to regulate the fishery. Regulations have been changed and improved over the last 20 years based on both fisheries dependent and independent stock assessments.

The current management regulations for the fishery include:

A limit of 25 non-transferable fishing licenses and 4 processing licenses
8-9 months open fishing season
Restrictions to only 3 species allowed to be exploited – For the 2020/2021 fishing season the species were, Flower teatfish, White teatfish and Pricky redfish (Thelenota ananas)
A Total Allowable Catch (TAC) – the quota for the 2020/2021 fishing season were 281,250 pieces for flower teatfish, 56,250 pieces for white teatfish and 37,500 pieces for prickly redfish

Licensed vessels are required according to their license conditions to adhere to these regulations and to provide catch and effort data to the SFA. Catches are sold to licensed processors where the sea cucumbers are prepared for exportation. Majority of the processed sea cucumber is sold to foreign markets.

Data Collection

Catch and effort data is collected through paper logbooks that are distributed to skippers during the vessel departure inspection at the beginning of a fishing trip and collected during the landing inspection at the end of the fishing trip. Training is given on how to fill the logbooks at the opening of each fishing season and whenever there are change in skippers. Scuba diving is the only fishing method currently being used to collect sea cucumbers. Following a dive, the logbook needs to be filled out with the following information,

Diving date
Fishing site either using GPS position or the fishing grid provided by SFA
Start and end diving time
Number of divers
Depths
Dive time for each diver
Catch in numbers of individual species

Landings catch data is also collected during routine inspection carried out by MCS officers whenever a vessel is offloading. The data includes catch in numbers and in weight by species.

Data Processing

The data collected on the paper logbook is captured in an access database and following capture the data is verified to correct any data entry errors by the Research section. The landings data is captured in an excel spreadsheet by the MCS officers. The paper logbook data for the past four fishing seasons is currently unavailable due to corruption of the access database, therefore all catch data presented in this report is based on the landings data.

Lobster Fishery

The Seychelles artisanal spiny lobster fishery targets shallow water lobster stocks around the main granitic islands. Locally, there are four species being exploited, notably, Pronghorn spiny lobster (Panulirus penicillatus), Long-legged spiny lobster (Panulirus longipes), Painted spiny lobster (Panulirus versicolor), and Ornate spiny lobster (Panulirus ornatus).

Data Collection

During the lobster fishing season data are collected from fishermen operating on Mahé, Praslin and La Digue through two main sources:

Fisher Catch and Effort log (FCEL): Each licensed fishermen is given a logbook to record information on their fishing activities. Information collected included information on catch, effort, and fishing location.
Sampled Catch and Effort log (SCEL): SFA research technicians sampled the landed catch directly whenever possible. Information on the species caught, weight and carapace length measures are collected. Interviews are also conducted to determine total effort and fishing location.

The lobster fishery operates on a seasonal and licensed basis; typically, the open season usually last for 3 months (December to March), however, the season length can vary depending on the state of the fishery. The 2020/2021 fishing season was opened for a period of 4 months from the 21st of December 2020 to the 20th of April 2021 (inclusive of a 1-month extension). A total of 16 licenses were on offer, among which 13 were from Mahé, 2 for Praslin and 1 from La Digue. Since 2011 a compliance bond of SCR5000 was introduced to ensure that licence holders comply to the license conditions such as the submission of all their logbooks at the end of the fishing season.

Fishing activity is carried out from dusk around 6pm to dawn 5am, by 2 to 4 fisherman using outboard engine vessel (often Mini Mahé). The permitted method of fishing in this fishery includes snorkelling, scuba dive and bamboo traps.

Data Processing

The collected data is captured in an access database and following capture the data is verified to correct any data entry errors. The information collected from the FCEL and the SCEL were crosschecked to determine the number of lobsters not sampled for each fishing trip. The average weight for each species was derived from the total weight and total number of lobsters (per species) recorded from the SCEL. The weight of lobsters not sampled for each fishing trip was estimated by raising the average weight of each species to the total number of that species caught. The total catch of lobsters was derived from the sum of weights of lobsters from the SCEL and the total sum of the raised weight of lobsters not sampled. The total effort was based on the total number of fishing trips undertaken. The catch per unit effort (CPUE) was calculated from the total catch in kg and the total effort.