PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Brooke M. D’Alberto
AU  - William T. White
AU  - Andrew Chin
AU  - Dharmadi
AU  - Colin A. Simpfendorfer
TI  - Untangling the Indonesian tangle net fishery: describing a data-poor fishery targeting large threatened rays (Order Batoidea)
AID  - 10.1101/608935
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 608935
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/04/18/608935.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/04/18/608935.full
AB  - Shark-like batoids (Order Rhinopristiformes) are normally taken as incidental catch in fisheries targeting other species, one exception is a poorly understood Indonesian tangle net fishery. Market surveys of Muara Angke landing port recorded landed catch for this fishery. Recent catch data from Indonesian Capture Fisheries (2017 – 2018) were also examined to provide contemporary information. During the market surveys, 1,559 elasmobranchs were recorded, comprised of 24 species of batoids and nine species of sharks. The most abundant were pink whipray Pateobatis fai and bottlenose wedgefish Rhynchobatus australiae, the latter being the main target species. Catch composition differed between individual tangle net boat landings, likely reflecting different fishing grounds, seasonal variation and potential localised declines in species over time. The fishery is highly selective for larger size classes, but smaller size classes of target species are also caught in high numbers in other Indonesian fisheries such as trawl, small mesh gillnet, and hand- and long-line fisheries. As of July 2018, the tangle net fishery was still operating, but few wedgefish were caught and the main landed catch was stingrays. Evidence of substantial and rapid declines in landings of wedgefish species, raises concerns about the status of shark-like batoids and stingrays in Indonesia.