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Review of the life history, fisheries, and stock assessment for small tunas in the Atlantic Ocean

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Abstract

Despite being an important source of wealth and food security for many countries, most of the small tuna stocks in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea remain unassessed. In this study, we summarized the current state of knowledge of this group of species reviewing the information available on life history parameters, stock structure, historical catches, size frequency distributions and current knowledge of stock status. In relation to the life history parameters, data are overall scarce and mainly missing in the Eastern Atlantic where small tunas are relevant in small-scale fisheries. From the 27 defined stocks, only 11 have been quantitatively assessed. From those, the Northwest wahoo and the Southeast little tunny stocks may be experiencing overfishing, deserving priority management attention. Length-based rather than catch-based methods showed a more promising applicability for small tunas, although representative length distributions from the catch are scarce for some stocks. Historical catch time series for small tuna are still incomplete, however, the last two decades are the most accurate and could be considered in future assessment methods. The gaps of knowledge related mainly to life history parameters and historical catches are the main reason why most of these stocks remain unassessed and unmanaged.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the ICCAT Small Tunas Working Group for providing life history traits information used as a base for the table presented in this study, and the ICCAT Secretariat Statistical Team for the assistance on consolidating the small tuna size information reported by the ICCAT member states. We also thank Nicole Baker for revising and editing the manuscript. Finally, we thank Rodrigo Sant’Ana and Thaiza Barreto or their support in the preparation of this manuscript.

Funding

This research was partially supported by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (Grant No. 308554/2019-1, and 307422/2020-8) through a research grant to Flávia Lucena Frédou and Thierry Frédou, and a technical grant to Andrey Soares (Protuna Project).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Pesca e Aquicultura, Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco (UFRPE), Av. Dom Manuel s/n, Recife, Pernambuco, 52171-900, Brazil

    Flávia Lucena-Frédou, Thierry Frédou & Andrey Soares

  2. Instituto do Mar, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Av. Doutor Carvalho de Mendonça, 144, Santos, 11070-100, Brazil

    Bruno Mourato

  3. IPMA - Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera, Av. 5 de Outubro s/n, 8700-305, Olhão, Portugal

    Pedro G. Lino & Rubén Muñoz-Lechuga

  4. Departamento de Biología, Facultad de Ciencias del Mar y Ambientales, Universidad de Cádiz, 11510, Puerto Real, Cádiz, Spain

    Rubén Muñoz-Lechuga

  5. ICCAT - International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, Corazón de Maria 8, 28002, Madrid, Spain

    Carlos Palma

  6. School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Box 355020, Seattle, WA, 98195-5020, USA

    Maite Pons

Authors
  1. Flávia Lucena-Frédou
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  2. Bruno Mourato
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  3. Thierry Frédou
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  4. Pedro G. Lino
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  5. Rubén Muñoz-Lechuga
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  6. Carlos Palma
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  7. Andrey Soares
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  8. Maite Pons
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study and data conception, material preparation and analysis. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Flávia Lucena Frédou and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Flávia Lucena-Frédou.

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Lucena-Frédou, F., Mourato, B., Frédou, T. et al. Review of the life history, fisheries, and stock assessment for small tunas in the Atlantic Ocean. Rev Fish Biol Fisheries 31, 709–736 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11160-021-09666-8

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