(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.