Successful FAD Watch Program Developed on Palmyra Atoll Expands to the Cook Islands 

In 2021 Kydd Pollock, pelagic conservation strategy lead for The Nature Conservancy’s Palmyra program, started the FAD Watch Program after multiple years of development. This innovative partnership between conservation and the USA and Spanish commercial tuna purse seine fishing industry allows TNC to remotely track drifting FADs (fish aggregating devices), or dFADs, and intercept them prior to grounding on sensitive coral reef habitat to protect Palmyra’s reefs from potential damage and provide important oceanographic data.

This partnership model, the first of its kind in the Pacific, will now be used to track dFADs in more than 2.8 million hectares of ocean around Aitutaki and Manuae in the Cook Islands. Tracking and retrieving dFADs that float into the waters around these tropical islands will help coral reef conservation efforts.

“The dFAD retrieval program in Aitutaki could not have happened without the drive from Kydd Pollock,” says the Honorable Mayor of Aitutaki, Nick Henry. “The program immediately reduces the damage impacts to our coral reef, increases catch options for local fishermen and through data collection improves our understanding of our surrounding ocean. Future generations of Aitutaki are indebted to Mr. Pollock for making this a reality.”

Palmyra’s FAD Watch Program is a collaboration with more than 35 tuna purse seine fishing industry partners that allow TNC to track drifting dFADs within the 5.4 million-hectare protected area around Palmyra Atoll and Kingman Reef and research how these dFADs interact with ocean-going species. The commercial fishing industry also grants TNC permission to intercept dFADs on a collision course with Palmyra’s surrounding reef to prevent them from causing long-lasting damage. To date, more than 85 dFADs have been intercepted, preventing ~15,000 feet of synthetic rope and netting material from severely impacting the reef.

“The American Tunaboat Association has long valued the outstanding cooperation with The Nature Conservancy with respect to the FAD Watch Program in Palmyra Atoll and Kingman Reef,” says Bill Gibbons-Fly, executive director of the American Tunaboat Association. “We strongly support the expansion of this partnership model to include Aitutaki and Manuae in the Cook Islands.  We look forward to continued cooperation with TNC on this initiative and to a productive working relationship with our colleagues in Aitutaki.”

This marks the first expansion of this program outside of Palmyra Atoll, coinciding with the 2nd International FAD Recovery workshop that will be held in February in Tahiti. More than 90 participants from Pacific Island nations and around the world will be in attendance.

“This opportunity to help the people and environment of an incredible Pacific island like Aitutaki with a real marine conservation issue is unbelievably rewarding for me,” Pollock says. “I have been very fortunate to learn so much about dFAD movement and recovery through the development of this program at Palmyra, so why not utilize that information to improve coral reef conservation in other regions. I can only hope this is just the beginning of a collaborative effort to improve dFAD management on a global scale. The industry partners we are currently engaged with have been amazingly cooperative and proven to deeply care about where their dFADs end up. I believe they sincerely want to be more involved in coral reef conservation through better dFAD management.”

FAD stands for fish aggregating device, a man-made floating structure that has a satellite location buoy and a very long netting tail. They are designed to attract fish that swim past in schools by offering refuge and a food source in the open ocean. It is estimated that up to 60,000 dFADs are deployed by the tuna purse seine industry in the Pacific Ocean annually, with the majority never recovered. These dFADs become debris that can entangle marine life and cause significant damage if they drift into coral reefs. Marine plants, mollusks and crustaceans like small crabs settle on this structure, and a wide variety of fish, including the target valuable commercial species such as yellowfin, skipjack and bigeye tuna, aggregate underneath the structure.

dFADs are tracked via satellite, but given the sheer number of devices, many drift away from the fleets fishing area, and the retrieval is not cost-effective often due to fishing regulations. In other instances, the fleet is legally unable to retrieve them in areas where they don’t have fishing access. The FAD Watch model developed at Palmyra has proven to be the first line of defense in keeping dFADs off coral reefs, but in the future there are hopes that additional offshore dFAD recovery processes are developed.