Final results of the jelly-FAD performance in the EPO with Ugavi fleet

In recent years we presented the Jelly-FAD, a new concept on non-entangling and biodegradable FAD (bio-FAD) design that mirroring jellyfish, drifts with quasineutral buoyancy, which reduces (i) the structural stress of the FAD at sea, making its lifespan longer and (ii) the need for additional plastic flotation. The jelly-FAD is not necessarily a fixed design; it is more of a change in the concept of conventional dFAD construction. The present document presents the final results by Ugavi fleet´s tests with jelly-FADs in the eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO). This study analyses the performance of 95 jelly-FADs that were deployed in pairs together with 95 conventional FADs in the same area. This study demonstrates that the catch performance, aggregation evolution, and drift speed of Jelly-FADs were similar to, or even better than, those of conventional FADs. Jelly-FADs have a proven lifetime of up to 11 months, with several being fished after 9 months at sea and 11% successfully redeployed.