MANTA, ECUADOR .- The Director of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, IATTC, Guillermo Compean Jimenez, started Wednesday meeting with the Undersecretary of Fisheries Resources MAGAP, in order to prepare for the launch of several projects of technical and scientific cooperation, including the marking of big eye tuna (Thunnus obesus) in the eastern Pacific, EPO.
Compean, the Undersecretary of Fisheries Resources, Guillermo Morán Velásquez, and a technical team, talked about the terms of the project which both institutions will sign for marking the big eye tuna or bigeye tuna in the EPO.
Moran said the project will be to confirm behavior, biology, habits, abundance, among other aspects of this species and consequently to take measures for its conservation.
Luis Torres, the Ecuadorian technical of the SRP, coincided with the position of Compean in the sense that bigeye tuna are being subjected to fishing overuse.
The two institutions could invest about a million dollars in research cruises to make copies for the bigeye tuna in areas near the Galapagos Islands, Cocos Islands and Hawaii.
This is a cooperative project that would extend for four years. Torres said it is likely that the first year of marking will be carried out from April.
Source: Subpesca.gov.ec
