It is generally accepted that innovations in tuna purse seine technology have affected fishing operations and the traditional measurement of fishing effort, days fished including searching time. Not much is known, however, about the actual effects of the innovations on fishing performance. Data from the us tuna purse seine fishery in the Western Pacific Ocean were used to determine the impact of drifting Fish Aggregating Devices (fads) on the performance of the us fleet. The results indicate, inter alia, a high rate of success (96%) in catching tuna and high yield rate (37 t/successful set) for fad sets. Log sets were comparable in success rate (94%) and catch rate (36 t/successful set). Unassociated sets, on the other hand, had a higher catch rate (42 t/successful set) than fad sets, but a low success rate, 53 per cent. fad sets significantly improved the fleet's performance.