A short-lived FAD in the Pacific: Implications and adaptations in the move to biodegradable fish aggregating devices

The development of biodegradable drifting fish aggregation devices (FADs) in tropical tuna fisheries will reduce marine pollution and, potentially, stranding events when FADs are abandoned or lost. Using estimated FAD deployment densities across the entire Pacific Ocean, we examine the relative change in FAD loss out of equatorial fishing zones, under differing FAD lifetime scenarios, by simulating FAD drift over two years. When FADs physically degrade after one year, we found that the greatest reduction in FADs lost out of the fishing ground was in the Western and Central Pacific. However, we also found a two-to-four-fold increase in the number of FADs that will prematurely degrade whilst still potentially operational. These results are discussed in the context of mitigating FAD impacts on marine debris, the need to repair and maintain FADs, and the potential for a future, compensatory effort of deploying increased numbers of FADs by fishing fleets.