Copious amount of livebait is used in the pole and line tuna fishery. MRC is working on the following areas of livebait fishery: 

1: Improving recording of livebait catch: In the past livebait catch was never recorded on a routine basis. Estimating livebait catch is an expensive and a time consuming affair. It requires weighing of livebait on real fishing trips. Estimates of annual livebait catch has been made four times. Livebait catch  has been estimated around four periods by estimating average weight of bait catch during fishing trip multiplied by the recoded number of days fished. Most recent estimates show that current annual catches would be of the order of 20,000 MT. The new approach that is being tested is the introduction of a standard bait scoop for measuring the boat catch. Fishermen are encouraged to quantify the bait catch by using the scoop to transfer the bait from the net to the bait well. It has shown that practice of hauling the bait in the net causes considerable post-harvest morality

2: Improving post-harvest mortality rates: the motivation of keeping bait live as much as possible in the bait well (or tanks) until is to ensure bait stay healthy until they are used. The longer they stay live in the well, the better the bait is utilized. Maldive fishermen do two things that defeats this objective a) they take the haul in the net and flick them into the bait well. Taking livebait in large concentration in the net causes to lose their skin and scales greatly increasing the mirrors rates. B) Maldives fishermen also catches bait in large volumes bs make them overcrowded in the bait well  exacerbating the post harvest issue. The fishermen need to be taught on proper handling bd captivity of livebait