(Seychelles News Agency) - The National Assembly has approved the ratification of a bilateral agreement with the United States which supporters say will help increase surveillance capabilities in Seychelles' waters.

(Seychelles Nation 20.5.21): Eight Chinese fishing vessels have been grounded at Port Victoria after they illegally anchored themselves in our territorial waters on Friday last week. Last Friday authorities found out there were several ships who weren’t identifiable anchored near Providence island.

President Ramkalawan has instructed the Minister for Agriculture, Environment and Climate Change, Flavien Joubert, to order an immediate stop on all works where marshes are being reclaimed and requested those who have blocked marshes to restore them in order to prevent further flooding.

(Seychelles Nation 8.5.21) The Seychelles Coastguard (SCG) has intercepted two dhows suspected to have been fishing illegally in Seychelles’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The two fishing dhows were spotted in Seychelles’ EEZ on Tuesday this week during a routine patrol by the Seychelles Air Force aircraft.

(Seychelles Nation 22.4.21) To better accomplish its mission which is ensure optimal use of the fisheries resources for the benefit of the Seychellois people through sustainable management, the Seychelles Fishing Authority has come up with new guidelines which will better administer the practice of semi-industrial fishing locally.

(Mongabay 8.4.2021 ) The yellowfin tuna stock is teetering on the verge of collapse. A plan to stop overfishing and restore it has failed. This March talks on the issue ended in a stalemate. The EU wants other members of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), the intergovernmental agency charged with managing tuna fisheries in the region, to be subject to greater restrictions, while some observers point to the EU’s own failure to play by the rules and save a stock that it profits so greatly from.

(Seychelles News Agency) Seychelles joined 30 other member countries of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) in a special weeklong session that began Monday to discuss the sustainability of fishing yellowfin tuna and to address deficiencies in the harvest control rule for skipjack tuna.

A Fish Aggregating Device or FAD was found recently on the reef of the Cousin Island Special Reserve, which is a highly protected, no-take reserve. This was found when the staff were retrieving temperature loggers in the marine protected area. This is not the first time that FADS from the tuna purse seining fleet have been found on Cousin.

It's been 10 years since Nature Seychelles made a splash in the local waters with the launch of its ground-breaking and game-changing Reef Rescuers project. Based on Praslin Island and working in the Cousin Island Special Reserve, the project sought to restore coral reefs damaged by climate change-induced coral bleaching. The herculean task was met with some scepticism and naysaying in some quarters. But a decade down the line, we have proved that, yes, we can restore corals. And we can do so at a large scale.

The media has reported the presence of about one hundred dead fish on the Anse Lazio Beach, Praslin suspected to be from a harmful algal bloom (HAB). The dead fish collected from the beach by the authorities were reported to be the species that are caught by artisanal fishers with fish traps.