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1. Union purse seiners that are authorised to fish tropical tuna, shall retain on board, land or tranship at port all tropical tunas caught.

2. Tropical tuna caught by a Union purse seiner shall not be discarded during the set once the net is completely closed and more than half of the net has been retrieved. If there is a technical problem with the closing or retrieval procedure of the net such that that prohibition cannot be applied, the masters, or the crew members on their behalf, shall make every effort to release the tunas into the water as quickly as possible.

3. By way of derogation from paragraph 1, tropical tunas may be discarded in the following cases:

(a) where the master determines that the tropical tunas caught are meshed or crushed in the purse seine, are damaged due to depredation, or have died and decomposed in the net due to a gear failure that has prevented the normal activities of retrieval of the net, fishing and releasing the fish alive;

(b) where the master determines that the tropical tunas have been caught during the last set of a trip and there is not enough storage capacity to store the tunas caught during this set; those fish may only be discarded provided that:

(i) the master or the crew members attempt to release the tunas alive as quickly as possible; and (ii) no other fishing operation is conducted following the discarding, until such time as the tunas on board the vessel are landed or transhipped.

4. The masters of the fishing vessels shall report all discards observed to the flag Member States of the vessels. Member States shall send the discard reports to the Commission as part of Task I and II data.