(Posted 03rd November 2026)
Courtesy of Ameer Ebrahim Ph.D. / LinkedIn
Breaking a world record by nearly twice the previous size
A visiting angler had landed a redmouth grouper (Aethaloperca rogaa, our galfa) of 2.6 kg in Seychelles The current IGFA all-tackle record is 1.41 kg, from Japan, so this fish is nearly double. I was asked to confirm the species ID for the IGFA submission, which was an easy call on this one. Fingers crossed now for the ruling.
What stuck with me was something the angler said afterwards. He has fished all over the world and never come across anywhere quite like Seychelles.
He has a point. We already hold around 60+ IGFA world records, which is a lot for a country our size, and I’m not convinced we’ve ever really thought about what that’s worth.
Belize did. After research showed what bonefish, permit and tarpon were worth to tourism, they made them catch-and-release only. Flats fishing there now brings in roughly BZ$246 million a year, close to 7% of GDP, and around 6,000 jobs. In Costa Rica, visiting anglers were found to generate more for the economy than commercial fishing for the same species.
If we grow sport fishing, it needs catch-and-release as the norm, proper licensing and catch reporting from charter operators, and room for local fishers to move into guiding. Done that way, it’s exactly the kind of low-volume, high-value tourism Seychelles should be chasing.
