Movements of juvenile yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) within the coastal FAD network adjacent to the Palau National Marine Sanctuary: Implications for local fisheries development

Abstract

Pacific Island nations and territories must build their capacity to harvest pelagic fishes to ensure domestic food security into the future. The Republic of Palau recently created the Palau National Marine Sanctuary, a Marine Managed Area that was intended to conserve marine resources and enhance local pelagic fisheries. However, the capacity of the nation’s domestic fishery to exploit pelagic species must be built to meet these objectives and, to this aim, the development of a coastal network of Fish Attracting Devices (FADs) has been proposed. To inform the development of the nation’s FAD program, we used acoustic telemetry to study the movements of yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) within Palau’s existing FAD network. Subadult yellowfin tuna (50−79 cm FL) remained within the FAD network for up to 175 days and young-of-the-year yellowfin tuna spent significantly more time in association with FADs in comparison to year-1 fish. A network analysis suggests that the Ngardmau and Peleliu FADs were the most important components of the current FAD network, and a mixed effects Poisson generalized linear model indicated that the residency of yellowfin tuna to these FADs was significantly related to mooring depth and distance from the reef. These results provide a description of yellowfin tuna movements within Palau’s FAD network and recommendations to improve the nation’s FAD program that are also applicable to other Pacific Island nations and territories that desire to improve domestic access to pelagic fish stocks.