A REVIEW OF SOME ASPECTS OF THE YELLOWFIN TUNA FISHERY IN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

Korea started the Atlantic tuna fishery from 1964 by means of longline, then added bait-boats in 1972. Both fisheries have given the top priority to catch yellowfin tuna(Thunnus albacares). The paper reviews available catch, effort and biological data, estimates some population parameters in order to understand the status of the Atlantic yellowfin tuna as a whole. The main findings are summarized as follows: 1. The total of 476 million hook-equivalent fishing effort was thrown to catch yellowfin tuna in 1974, among which one thired was shared by longliners. 2. The dominant age group becomes younger in both surface and longline fisheries. 3. The recent mortality coefficients were calculated as 1.5 for total mortality and 0.7 for fishing mortality. 4. The weight at recruitment was 2.7 kg in 1973 which was smaller than the regulation size(3.2kg) proposed by ICCAT. 5. The maximum sustained yield was calculated to 95-145 thousand metric tons, which was the level of recent catch. Therefore, it is apparent that the present yellowfin tuna fishery should continue to receive close attention.