Dayaratne P. <br/><br/>
Recent Trends in the Tuna Fisheries of Sri Lnka 

 - Colombo,  1995, 
 - 1-7p. 
 - Collective Volume of Working Document   Vol. 9 .
<br/><br/> The tuna fisheries in Sri Lanka are undergoing significant developmental changes, with more and more tuna fishing boats making multi-day fishing trips in offshore waters. There are now about 1200 multi-day boats and more boats of larger size (>40 ft length) continue to enter these fisheries and stay out atsea for more than 10 days; some even fish in international waters. Gillnels and longlines are used in combination, and together account for more than 95% of the total fishing effort. The total production of large pelagic fish is in the region of 75,000 t, about 55,000 t of which is from offshore areas. The continuous expansion of the offshore fishing fleet and the extended area of operation have contributed to this increase in production. The average catch rales of the tuna-fishing fleet have remained about 200 kg/boat night, with some variations between different craft-gear combinations. All species of tunas together contribute about 50% of the catch of large pelagic species. Almost 60% of the tuna catch consists of skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pel am is), followed by yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares), which represents 20%. Sharks arid billfish also form a significant percentage of the large pelagic catch.<br/>With the issuing of permits to local and foreign fishing companies to land the tuna caught by longliners operating in international waters, few local boat owners have started longlining for tunas at the 50-100m depth range to target the deep-swimming large yellowfin (Thunnus albacares) and bigeye (Thunnus obesus) tunas. It is expected that in future more boats will diversify their fishing to target these.