Strategies and tactics of tuna fishers in the payao (anchored FAD) fishery from general Santos city, Philippines Edison D. Macusi a,n , Ricardo P. Babaran b , P.A.M. van Zwieten a a Aquaculture and Fisheries Group, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 338, 6700 AH, Wageningen, The Netherlands b College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, University of the Philippines Visayas, Miag-ao, Ilo-ilo, The Philippines article info Article history: Received 6 March 2015 Received in revised form 17 August 2015 Accepted 31 August 2015 Keywords: Fishing effort General Santos City Handline Juvenile yellowfin tuna Purse seine Ringnet Weather and current abstract Payaos or anchored FADs are used extensively in the Philippine tuna fishery. Currently, spatial regulations on FAD use are implemented with limited observance or understanding of their potential impacts. A combination of semi-structured interviews (n ¼150) and a total of six focus group discussions (n ¼61) from purse seine, ringnet and handline fishers of General Santos City provided a coarse indication of fishers' operational patterns and decisions on fishing tactics and strategies. Over a period of about 25 years, Filipino FAD fishers moved from inshore areas to offshore areas to catch oceanic tunas and FAD associated small pelagics and neritic tunas. Presently their catch rates are reported to be significantly higher at more distant sites. Due to the high density and spatial limitations of FADs deployment in nearshore areas, offshore deployment of FADs in a spatial network that is owned by a company has become a strategy to maintain hold of a fishing ground. Purse seine and ringnet fishers, as area spe- cialists, operate from 70 to 1000 km from the fishing port and have an average reported catch rate of 14 t per set. Handline fishers which roam freely between FAD areas claimed by purse seine and ringnet fishing companies which operate from 90 to 1500 km from the fishing port with an average reported catch rate of 1.6 t per fishing trip. Strategic decisions on the deployment of FADs in fishing grounds were strongly modulated by availability of fishing space, environmental considerations and both experience and information on areas with good catches. Day to day tactical decisions were mainly explained by socially mediated information flows, weather patterns and economic factors, and to a lesser extent by fish behavior and regulations. & 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction With a predominantly coastal population, the Philippines is highly dependent on protein from fish and income arising from the fisheries industry. Given the challenges posed by overfishing, degradation of ecosystems and the impacts of climate change, the need to identify, document, and quantify fisher's adaptive re- sponses to these changes is essential. Adaptation of fishers to changing conditions can be assessed by studying their effort al- location strategies and tactics, in other words their decisions on long term investments and on short term fishing operational de- cisions. Studies on the impacts of fishing around Fish Attracting Devices (FADs) and the strategies that small and medium scale tuna fishers employ to adapt to changing fisheries conditions are scarce [1]. It is generally assumed that knowledge on stock avail- ability plays a key role in the decision making on fishing locations. However, fishing decisions are as much influenced by operational constraints, and effort allocation is in fact the dynamic outcome of economic, social, cultural, environmental factors, resource dis- tribution as well as rules and regulations that result in hetero- geneous distribution of fishing effort [2,3]. This study focused on the context of strategic and tactical effort allocation decisions made by fishers utilizing anchored Fish At- tracting Devices (FADs) also known as payaos operating in southern Philippines. FAD structures have been around for cen- turies in coastal areas with fishers exploiting the associative be- havior of fish to floating objects [4]. Fish and fish schools of tunas, tuna-like species, sardines and anchovies associate with FADs [5– 8]. Nowadays, more than 60% of the global tuna production of 2.5– 3 million metric tons, consisting primarily of tropical tunas like skipjack (Katsuwonus pelamis), yellowfin(Thunnus albacares) and bigeye (T. obesus), are caught by large purse seine vessels that use drifting FADs [9,10].A payao, on the other hand, is an anchored structure composed of a floater made of bamboo, styrofoam or a steel drum with a series of palm fronds suspended underneath Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpol Marine Policy http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2015.08.020 0308-597X/& 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. n Corresponding author. E-mail address: edison.macusi@wur.nl (E.D. Macusi). Marine Policy 62 (2015) 63–73