| FOCUS ON THE FACULTY |
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| PROFESSOR'S INTEREST IN TUNA IS NO
"FAD" |
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| By Tristan Mouligne |
Actually, it's FAD, which stands for Fish Aggregating Devices. Sancho is involved with a project called FADIO (Fish Aggregating Devices as Instrumental Observations). The project is a research program funded by the European Union that is developing new observation instruments to try and better understand the behavior of exploited populations of fish, in particular tuna.
Born in Tucson, Ariz., Sancho lived most of his life in Spain and completed his undergraduate work there before moving to the U.S. to work on his Ph.D. at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Sancho continued to work out of Woods Hole as an oceanography faculty in the Sea Education Association.
After several years, Sancho decided to move back to Spain to work full time at the AZTI Technological and Fisheries Institute in the Basque region of Spain. "That was fun for a few years, but I really missed teaching." Sancho says. "I was interested in research but I was very interested in education and really wanted to be teaching."
Fortunately for the College of Charleston, Sancho decided to take a position at the college in the biology department. "It is perfect, I get to teach and continue my research and work with FADIO," he says.
According to Paul Marino, chair of C of C's biology department, faculty doing research outside the classroom is critical to the mission of the College of Charleston and the biology department. "The best way to learn science is to do science," said Marino. "Research-active faculty are the key to providing research experiences for undergraduates. Faculty do this research because interdisciplinary and international projects are a fundamental part of modern science. It enriches their experience as a researcher and it enriches the experience of our students."
Sancho's specialty is fish behavioral ecology and fisheries conservation. He has worked with coral reef fishes, hydrothermal vent fishes, temperate marine fishes, diadromous salmon and eels, plus freshwater crayfish. However, Sancho's recent research is the behavior of pelagic tropical tuna with the FADIO project.
FADIO plans to conduct many oceanographic sea surveys with modern instruments such as acoustic tags, sonar and echosounders as well as tracking schools of tuna using global satellite technology. They do this by developing these fish aggregating devices that attract schools of fish. "It is well known that these floating objects, or FAD's, are attractive to aggregating species of fish, in particular tropical tuna," said Sancho, "We know that they do aggregate around these objects but we don't know why."
The concept of FAD's developed from the discovery that many fish form schools around natural objects in the ocean. Kelp and floating trees or branches are natural objects that fish swim around. Eventually, upon realization of this phenomenon fisherman began building FAD's to help them catch more fish. Using bamboo and pieces of broken nets they began dropping these objects in the ocean.
Increasingly, fisherman exploit these associations to increase their catches. According to Sancho, each year modern industrial tuna fisheries release thousands of drifting Fish Aggregating Devices with the purpose of attracting more fish and facilitating their harvest.
Although the main objective of FADIO is not necessarily to conserve tuna but to understand their behavior, Sancho cannot help but be concerned about the increased use of FADs to catch tuna. Currently more than half of the worldwide tuna catch, estimated to be 3.5 million tons per year, comes from schools associated with floating objects and according to Sancho the trend is increasing. "It is a fishery that officially is in good standing, I stress officially because with the amount of boats fishing and the low price of tuna fisherman are forced to catch more tuna. With these trends I think it is a fishery that will be getting in trouble very soon," said Sancho.
As of now there are no regulations limiting the amount of tuna that can be harvested or the number of FAD's that commercial fisherman can drop in the ocean since they are fishing international waters. There is an international counsel that can advise but has no legal authority, according to Sancho.
Sancho hopes the research being done by FADIO will lead to a better understanding of the behavior of tuna and in turn may help with the conservation of the species. Sancho is optimistic for the future, "We don't know if they aggregate because they feed better as a group, or if it is a bus stop for single tuna to meet other single tuna and form schools, but hopefully we will come to a better understanding of that soon."
The FADIO project is funded by a three year grant from the European Union. Sancho and his colleagues are in the middle of the second year of research.
For more information about Dr. Gorka Sancho, please visit: http://www.cofc.edu/~sanchog/
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Gorka
Sancho and his son