South Africa

South Africa has a coastline of about 3 100 km, and an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of more than 1.5 million km 2 . South Africa has two commercial fishing sectors that target tuna – the Large Pelagic Longline and the Tuna Pole-line (baitboat) sectors. The latter sector mainly targets albacore tuna and to a lesser degree yellowfin tuna and rarely operates in the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission Area of Competence. The Large Pelagic Longline sector comprises two fleets, the South African-flagged Large Pelagic Longline vessels and the Japanese-flagged vessels, operating under joint-venture. A total of 25 longline vessels were active in the IOTC Area of Competence in 2018. They caught 212.1 t of bigeye tuna, 331.4 t of yellowfin tuna, 17.9 t of albacore tuna, 123.3 t of swordfish and 0.1 t of skipjack tuna.