Whale Shark on Board a Purse Seiner in the Pacific Ocean

A purse seine vessel with a whale shark caught as bycatch in the Pacific. Whale sharks, being slow swimming filter feeding fish, act as natural aggregation devices for tuna in tropical oceans and are killed in unsustainable numbers in purse seine fisheries. The vessels either set their nets on these creatures to catch the surrounding tuna or the whale sharks are caught in nets around fish aggregation devices (FADs) that attract these magnificent creatures as well as other sharks, turtles and juvenile tuna as well as the targeted adult tuna species. A full ban on the use of FAD in purse seine fisheries is needed to ensure that these vulnerable gentle creatures are protected from tuna fisheries. Greenpeace is calling on the West and Central Pacific fisheries commission to ban this fishing method and on retailers to stop the sales of tuna products originating from setting purse seines on FADs.