Tanzania

Tanzania has a coastline of 1,424 km, and an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of nearly 223,000 square km. Tuna and tuna-like fishing in Tanzanian is dominated by artisanal fleets, which use local multi-gears landing multi-species catch. Most of the fishing vessels range from 3 to 11 metres long. The main gears are manually handled drift nets and anchored gillnets, ring nets, hand line, purse seiner and long lines. 6,336 artisanal vessels operated in the tuna fishing in 2018, catching 13,875 t of tuna and tuna-like species. The catches were dominated by the Spanish mackerel (3 176 t), followed by kawakawa tuna (3,121 t), sharks (3,087 t), swordfish (2,593 t), skipjack tuna (1,293 t) and bigeye tuna (5,934 t). The industrial fishery in the Tanzanian EEZ is conducted by Distant Water Fishing Nations, using large- scale purse seine and longline vessels, targeting tropical tuna.