The observer programme onboard the Spanish tropical tuna purse seine fleet recorded the incidental catch of one adult megamouth shark Megachasma pelagios in December 2005 and two juvenile megamouth sharks in the eastern Atlantic in July 2016 and August 2018, respectively. The same fleet also bycaught an adult individual in December 2005 in the western Indian Ocean. The juveniles were caught relatively near to the coast, while the adult was caught in oceanic waters. The companion species in the fishing sets were elasmobranchs, tuna and billfish.

Ecological risk assessment is a useful methodology for assisting the management of fisheries from an ecosystem perspective. Atlantic tuna fisheries, managed by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), are economically important and interact with several bycatch species. In spite of these interactions, no comprehensive ecological risk assessment has been conducted for bycatch species caught in ICCAT fisheries. In this paper, we followed a two stage approach with the objective of assessing the relative risk of species being negatively impacted by Atlantic tuna fisheries. An analysis of the ICCAT bycatch species list (which includes all species reported to have interacted with different tuna fishing gears operating in the Atlantic) revealed that most of these species are caught in longline fisheries, followed by gillnets and purse seines. According to the IUCN red list, 7 species of the ICCAT bycatch list (3 coastal sharks, 3 sea turtles and one seabird) are categorized as critically endangered. In our study, and based on their life history characteristics, marine mammals and coastal sharks caught in ICCAT fisheries showed the highest intrinsic vulnerability values. A productivity susceptibility analysis for the European Union (EU) tropical tuna purse seine fleet and the United States (US) pelagic longline fleet revealed two groups with high relative risk scores. The first one included pelagic and coastal sharks, characterized by relatively low productivities, and the second one included teleosts, characterized by higher productivities but high susceptibility to purse seine and longline gears. Some alternative approaches to conduct productivity susceptibility analyses in the context of ecological risk assessments are discussed.

Bycatch of several groups of species and their characteristics are presented for the period 2003 to 2007 for the European purse seine tuna fishery operating in the Atlantic Ocean. Data were collected through French and Spanish observer programmes and represented a total of 27 trips corresponding to 2.9% coverage. Bycatch is defined as non-targeted species and small or damaged target species. Bycatch species composition, main species length, sex ratio and the fate of the most common species are presented first. Stratified ratios relative to landings of major commercial tunas were then used to estimate the total bycatch; these ratios were considered the most appropriate variable for extrapolation. Stratification was based on the fishing mode (free school vs. floating object), season (quarters) and spatial areas. The annual average bycatch was estimated at about 6400 t, corresponding to a mean annual value of 80.8 t per 1000 t of tuna landed or 7.5% of the total catch. Tunas represent 83% (67.2 t/1000 t) of the total bycatch, followed by other bony fishes (10%, 7.8 t/1000 t), billfishes (5%, 4.0 t/1000 t), sharks (1%, 0.9 t/1000 t) and rays (1%, 0.9 t/1000 t). Based on estimates of the annual bycatch, 16% was kept on board and sold in local markets.

The Revolving Fund of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has an almost 30 year track record of providing access to essential vaccines for the entire population of Latin America and the Caribbean region. The activities of the PAHO Revolving Fund, coupled with the provision of high-quality technical assistance, were crucial to the successful control, elimination, or eradication of most of the region's great childhood killers, including measles and polio. Today, however, the Revolving Fund faces new challenges in the form of procuring a new generation of vaccines for human papillomavirus infection, rotavirus, and pneumococcal disease, which are priced orders of magnitude higher than the traditional childhood vaccines. The high cost of these essential new vaccines may require the PAHO Revolving Fund to establish innovative financial mechanisms for procuring these products at prices affordable for national immunization programs in Latin America and the Caribbean. The alternative, namely to bypass the Revolving Fund, could severely threaten the health of the region, especially Latin America's poorest people.