International Seafood Sustainability Foundation

The Issue

There is a general consensus among scientists, regional bodies, and governments that excess fishing capacity exists in most of the tuna purse-seine fisheries and large-scale longline fisheries, and that the problem of overfishing is principally the result of open access fishing and concomitant excess capacity.

A number of recent technical meetings supported by FAO, IATTC, and the World Bank have expressed that there is an overwhelming and urgent need to address the problems of overcapacity and open access with respect to international tuna fisheries, and called for studies and programs which could lead to the implementation of measures to resolve these problems, particularly such studies and programs addressing rights-based management and capacity controls in international tuna fisheries.

What ISSF is Doing

ISSF has begun facilitating the scientific gatherings and reports necessary to control and limit the number of vessels fishing for a finite resource.

What ISSF Wants to Accomplish

The goal is for global tuna fishing capacity of purse seine and large longline vessels to be commensurate with the MSY of each specific tuna species.; that capacity to be allocated through a form of rights based management; and the development of a science-based “optimal” capacity calculation and implementation of a plan to reduce purse seine and longline capacity to this level.

ISSF plans to accomplish this by:

1. The identification of best available practices to reduce fishing capacity.
2. Demonstrating the benefits of rights-based fisheries management.
3. The development of a model to calculate optimal fishing capacity.
4. The implementation by RFMOs of best available practices to reduce fishing capacity.
5. The development of a long term plan to reduce capacity to optimal levels.