Chapter 5 - The Society for Coastal Ecosystems Studies - Asia Pacific (SCESAP)

The Society for Coastal Ecosystems Studies - Asia Pacific (SCESAP) - Symposium is a major international symposium covering all aspects of biodiversity studies in the coastal environments of Asia Pacific. This event was held in 12-16 August 2019 Bogor Agricultural University Bogor, Indonesia.

We present our paper about thresher shark fisheries in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Thresher sharks are an evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered species group and Indonesia is the world’s largest shark fishing nation, and a global priority for reducing capture of threatened shark species.

Kutaradja port is one of Indonesia’s largest fishing ports, located in the capital of Aceh Province, Banda Aceh, Western Indonesia. Kutaradja is a large oceanic port serving a variety of fisheries, from small scale to industrial fleets. One of the main fisheries operating from Kutaradja port is an industrial purse seine fleet targeting valuable pelagic fish, particularly tuna. Pelagic sharks such as threshers are vulnerable to capture in these fisheries, due to their co-occurrence with stocks of valuable pelagic species.

In this symposium, we describe the volume and composition of shark catch in Aceh's purse seine fleet, based on daily landing monitoring conducted in 2017 to 2019. Our results show that the dominant species caught are thresher sharks, which make up 51% of all shark landings. Catch is dominated by mature females, which could be particularly detrimental to the reproductive capacity of the population. Based on these findings we proposed recommendations for reducing thresher shark fishing mortality, including restricting the use of secondary fishing gears and releasing incidentally captured sharks. Hopefully this findings can help to reduce unintentional capture on thresher shark in Indonesia particularly in Aceh.

Writer: Muhammad Ichsan