Electronic Monitoring (EM) in Eastern Pacific Ocean Pelagic Longlines

When this project began, it was coordinated through the Eastern Pacific large pelagics – longline FIP (now inactive) and included yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) and mahi-mahi (Coryphaena hippurus) in Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Panama, and swordfish (Xiphias gladius) in Costa Rica. The fishery improvement project (FIP) was already implementing circle hooks, monofilament leaders, and different bait types to reduce bycatch, but they did not have electronic monitoring (EM) in place to collect data on the effectiveness of those mitigation practices. There was also a general lack of data collection in the region to clearly understand the types (species) and amounts of ETP bycatch interactions in the fishery.

SFP worked with The Nature Conservancy and the FIP participants to implement EM on three vessels for one year. The EM will confirm that vessels are using best practices to reduce bycatch of sharks and sea turtles and will provide an opportunity to capture data on the frequency and locations of interactions and the result of the interactions (released alive, retained, mortality) as well as more specific data on the species of sharks and sea turtles. Instead of just focusing on the mahi season, this will be a year-round effort. These vessels fish for different species year-round, and having the EM onboard all year will give us a better sense of their bycatch challenges.

Updates

December 2025

As noted, this one-year pilot project has been completed, however, the work continues to expand and grow. At the end of 2024, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) initiated the next stage of the project to increase fishery-level data collection and improve tuna traceability using radio-frequency Identification (RFID) as well as electronic monitoring (EM) technology.

Now with support from Wholechain, Sea Pact, and regional fishing partners, the project has continued to make substantial progress integrating electronic monitoring (EM), RFID tagging, and cold-chain quality tracking into semi-industrial longline vessels operating in the Eastern Tropical Pacific.

The program matches well with Sea Pact’s sustainability efforts since fresh/frozen tuna from the Costa Rica region is a priority species for Sea Pact. In 2025, some Sea Pact members began piloting tuna sourced from participating project vessels. Early feedback from participating seafood buyers indicates interest in the program’s ability to deliver clearer sustainability assurances, reduced fraud risk, and greater consistency in product quality. The project will continue to provide Sea Pact and other stakeholders with “real-time” feedback regarding verified bycatch data, fishing efforts, market challenges, improvement for traceability, labor accountability and fish quality. Recent progress has included:

Successful testing of EM + RFID integration on multiple Costa Rica–based vessels along for capture of fish-level traceability from the moment of capture through landing.
AI-assisted review of EM footage to verify species identification, event timing, and captain-reported logbook data, reducing reporting inconsistencies.
Temperature sensors and time-to-ice tracking for improved visibility into onboard handling and cold-chain performance, helping buyers assess product quality.
Project data alignment to ensure compatibility with widely used traceability platforms.
Regular project updates to Sea Pact members including information regarding market feedback and buyer perspectives to ensure strong commercial alignment and support for the tuna.

May 27, 2025

This project is now complete and the data has been reviewed.

The one-year pilot project focused on four Eastern Pacific longline large pelagic fishing vessels from August 2023 to August 2024. EM systems were installed on each vessel to monitor fishing activities and collect detailed catch data, including species identification, location, time, date, and count. This data was then linked to corresponding imagery captured by the EM systems. The primary goal of the project was to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of using EM technology to enhance fisheries monitoring and management practices in the Panamanian longline fishery.

Data from the pilot project showed 3,888 total individual catch or discard fish records collected between the four participating vessels. The average trip per vessel was 15-20 days. The catches primarily consisted of yellowfin tuna, in addition to other species such as albacore tuna, skipjack, bigeye tuna, black marlin, mahi-mahi, sailfish, striped marlin, swordfish, billfish, and wahoo. Two encounters with ETP shark species were observed during the study.

Additionally, essential data was collected that can be used for future EM improvement, including obstacles observed during the project such as limited camera angles, improperly aligned cameras, obscured/dirty cameras, and limited GPS camera data. The also project served to introduce the Panama government to EM, and has added value to the National EM Program (Transshipment vessels in international waters).

Although the project did not note a high occurrence of non-target catch, which may have been due to the type of gear set and retrieval, it did show the value of EM projects to track vessel operations, verify bycatch interactions and provide data.

October 23, 2023

Two Panamanian tuna longline vessels have had two cameras installed by Integrated Monitoring, the electronic monitoring program being used in this project. One camera is a telescopic arm that points to where the fish come up, and the other camera is set to capture images from the deck. These two vessels, fishing out of Pedregal, have both completed two trips (approximately 15 days each) with the camera systems operational. Data collected during these trips was stored while the vessels were at sea, and the data was transmitted once the vessels were within a few miles of the coast. Data is being analyzed by AIS and a Peruvian team of EM Reviewers. In the next month, a third vessel will begin fishing with both the Integrated Monitoring system and Starlink, which will provide live feed of data.

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