Doctoral student Melissa Cronin of the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the Grand Prize winner in ISSF’s International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) Seafood Sustainability Contest. She wins for her contest entry, “Incentivizing Collaborative Release to Reduce Elasmobranch Bycatch Mortality,” which proposes handling-and-release methods that purse-seine vessel skippers and crew can use to reduce the mortality of manta rays and devil rays incidentally caught during tuna fishing. Ms. Cronin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Conservation Action Lab at UC Santa Cruz studying Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Learn more about her research experiences and winning idea.
Doctoral student Melissa Cronin of the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the Grand Prize winner in ISSF’s International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) Seafood Sustainability Contest. She receives a $45,000 prize from ISSF for her contest entry, “Incentivizing Collaborative Release to Reduce Elasmobranch Bycatch Mortality,” which proposes handling-and-release methods that purse-seine vessel skippers and crew can use to reduce the mortality of manta rays and devil rays incidentally caught during tuna fishing.
Her winning proposal calls for cooperative workshops with purse-seine skippers and observers, offering financial rewards for the design, testing, and onboard implementation of feasible, scalable techniques for safely removing rays from vessel decks.
It also includes training observers in tagging rays to track their post-release survival. Rays, in addition to sharks, are the species groups most vulnerable in the purse-seine fishery. In the Indian Ocean, for example, rays comprise the majority of bycatch in tuna fishers’ free-school sets: bycatch overall on such sets represents 0.9% of the total catch, and 34% of that is rays.
Ms. Cronin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Conservation Action Lab at UC Santa Cruz studying Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Learn more about her research experiences and winning idea in her ISSF blog post and video.
In addition to the $40,000 Grand Prize, the award includes a trip, with an estimated $5,000 value, to a tuna event. ISSF will arrange for Ms. Cronin to present her proposal at a Regional Fisheries Management Organization (RFMO) event this year.
Winning Proposal Builds on ISSF Scientist-Fisher Collaboration
Dr. Victor Restrepo, ISSF Vice President, Science and Chair of the ISSF Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC), led the contest’s judging panel. “Through this competition, we’re pleased to reward promising research ideas from up-and-coming marine and fisheries scientists,” he commented. “Ms. Cronin’s thoughtful proposal is based on collaborative problem-solving between fishers and scientists — a successful model ISSF follows in our Skippers Workshops worldwide. Our workshops have focused on finding new approaches in tuna fisheries to protect sharks and other non-tuna species, for example.”
The judging panel evaluated contest entries on the following criteria: originality, conservation impact, impact on skipjack catches, degree to which idea has been tested, feasibility of industry-wide implementation, and cost effectiveness. In addition to Dr. Restrepo, the panel included Dr. Josu Santiago, AZTI; Dr. Laurent Dagorn, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD); Dr.Gala Moreno, ISSF Science Consultant; and Miguel Herrera, OPAGAC Scientist.
Runner-Up Prize Winning Entry Focuses on Oceanic Sharks
Guillermo Ortuno Crespo, a researcher at the Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab at Duke University, receives a $10,000 prize as the contest Runner-up Winner for his proposal, “Dynamic Habitat Predictions of Two Bycaught Oceanic Shark Species.” His proposal focuses on predicting the dynamic, spatial distribution of non-target and sometimes target species based on their environmental preferences.
Mr. Crespo’s study explores the dynamic habitats of Carcharhinus longimanus and C. falciformis in the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) region, to help predict where fisher-shark bycatch interactions are likely to occur.
The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) is responsible for the effective long-term conservation and management of highly migratory fish stocks in the western and central Pacific Ocean (WCPO). With about 52 percent of the global production of tuna coming from the WCPO — catches of skipjack, yellowfin, and bigeye tuna in 2018 were 2,544,000 tonnes — it’s easy to see why organizations like ours are promoting the long-term conservation and management of Pacific fisheries.
This year, ISSF is urging the Commission to make progress on important elements of sustainable fisheries management, specifically harvest strategies and transshipment regulations, which will foster the long-term health of the region’s fisheries.
Commission Must Progress Harvest Strategies
ISSF is committed to supporting the development of rigorous harvest strategies for all tuna fisheries, including those managed by the WCPFC. A harvest strategy is a pre-agreed framework for recommending or making fisheries management decisions, such as setting catch limits, that is designed to achieve specific management objectives. ISSF works toward the goal of all tuna fisheries becoming capable of achieving the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification standard without conditions. And the adoption of harvest control rules (HCRs) and harvest strategies are key elements of the MSC certification standard.
The clock is ticking for the Commission on this critical matter. Despite the commitments in the WCPFC Harvest Strategy Work Plan, there has been a disappointing level of discussion and progress in the Commission: the timeframes in the original Work Plan have lapsed. WCPFC urgently needs to develop species-specific harvest strategies and HCRs.
Further, tuna from the WCPO comprise the majority of the MSC-certified tuna available globally. The MSC has established hard deadlines regarding these elements of certification, and if these deadlines are not met via swift management decisions by the WCPFC, these fisheries risk losing certification. For example, if WCPFC does not adopt harvest control rules by 2021 for southern albacore, skipjack and yellowfin stocks, and by 2023 for the northern albacore stock, the current MSC certification for these stocks will be suspended.
With these factors in mind, ISSF is urging WCPFC fisheries managers to progress the adoption of harvest control rules by acting decisively at their annual meeting to:
Develop harvest control rules for skipjack and south Pacific albacore, and agree on a target reference point for yellowfin and bigeye tunas, in line with the Harvest Strategy Work Plan
Establish a Science-Management Dialogue by adopting the Terms of Reference proposed by the WCPFC Scientific Committee
Better Management of At-Sea Activities
Transshipment is the transfer of fish or fish products, at sea or in port, from one fishing vessel to either another fishing vessel — or to a vessel used solely for the carriage of cargo — for further transport. At-sea transshipments are of concern in fishery management since, if not properly monitored, they can complicate the collection of accurate data and the traceability of product, creating a fertile environment for IUU fishing activities.
According to Commission data, the number of high-seas transshipment events has increased by 155 percent between 2014 and 2018. And reports presented at the WCPFC Technical and Compliance Committee show continued non-compliance by the member nations that authorise vessels to transship at sea. These 10 nations are failing to meet the deadlines for required reports like advanced notifications and transshipment event reports.
It’s time that WCPFC addresses the deficiencies in its transshipment measure that are exacerbating and perpetuating this situation. Specifically, ISSF is urging the WCPFC to adopt amendments to its transshipment measure in line with best practices, which are being also advanced by many other partners, to:
Require real time reporting for all transshipment activity
Require members to report on at-sea transshipment conducted inside EEZs
Extend the transshipment management arrangements to bunkering vessels
Automatically include in the draft IUU vessel list any vessels that breach the transshipment measure, and adopt clear criteria for flag State authorization of at-sea transshipment and a process for the Commission to review issued authorizations against those criteria
Require 100 percent observer coverage for longline vessels, and all vessels engaged in at-sea transshipment, within five years
We hope you will join our efforts to urge progress on these priorities by advocating for action at the upcoming WCPFC meeting. You can do this by meeting with national delegations that will be tabling proposals and making the decisions at the meeting; vessel and industry representatives that attend as part of these national delegations and who exercise influence over the positions their governments take; and FIPs, tuna processors, retailers, and buyers to encourage them to also advocate for concrete action at WCPFC.
After a week of intense negotiations, 800 participants took decisive action at the close of this year’s meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). The Commission made important progress by acting to protect the region’s overfished bigeye tuna stock and to strengthen monitoring, control and data collection programs.
ICCAT Strengthens FAD Management and Observer Coverage
While reductions in the catch limits for bigeye in the new ICCAT tropical tuna conservation measure are interim and will be reviewed next year, the measure now also includes important FAD management elements for which ISSF and our stakeholders have long advocated.
These elements will help protect bigeye stocks, which are overfished in the Atlantic Ocean, and they include:
A two-month FAD closure in 2020 and a three-month FAD closure in 2021 throughout the Convention Area (ICCAT had previously only prohibited fishing with FADs during a two-month period in a limited part of its Convention Area)
A reduction of operational FAD buoys from 500 — the highest of all the tuna RFMOs — down to 300 by 2021
ICCAT also increased observer coverage for both purse seine and longline fleets, a development worthy of celebration. ICCAT has long required 100 percent observer coverage only on tropical tuna purse seiners during its time/area two-month FAD moratorium. And ICCAT’s science body has repeatedly highlighted that five percent observer coverage for longliners is inadequate to provide reasonable estimates of total bycatch. The lack of quality data from observer programs on catches and interactions with non-target species for both fisheries has undermined stock assessments, hindering scientific input for the development of effective conservation measures.
We are pleased that ICCAT began remedying this situation with decisions like these at this year’s meeting:
Requiring 100 percent observer coverage, year round, on purse seine vessels targeting tropical tunas
Increasing observer coverage on longline vessels over 20 meters to 10 percent in 2022
Requiring the development of minimum standards for electronic monitoring by 2021
Speaking of observers, another big win was ICCAT’s adoption of a measure protecting on-board human observers, joining the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) in ensuring observers can perform their jobs in a safe, professional environment.
A final important accomplishment this year was the adoption of amendments to modernize the ICCAT Convention text. These amendments will strengthen ICCAT’s mandate and tools to sustainably manage not only the tuna resources of the Atlantic but also sharks and the broader marine ecosystem. And they will help ICCAT combat IUU activities and implement the precautionary approach to fisheries management.
Misses for At-sea Transshipment Reform and the Conservation of Turtles and Sharks
ISSF and our NGO partners have been advocating for stronger controls on the practice of at-sea transshipment. ICCAT’s regulation of at-sea transshipment does not follow best practices on these issues:
Time frames for seeking authorization to transship at sea
Requiring 100 percent observer coverage on both the carrier and fishing vessel
Widening data-sharing arrangements
Shorter deadlines for submitting completed transshipment declarations
Unfortunately, ICCAT again failed to take action to adopt these best practices and other necessary reforms to its rule regulating transshipment. The lack of action was due largely to opposition from three member nations that have collectively engaged in more than 90 percent of at-sea transshipments in the ICCAT Convention Area between 2018 and 2019.
ICCAT also failed to adopt stronger measures to protect endangered and threatened sea turtles that are caught incidentally in longline fisheries. The adoption of a recommendation that would have implemented ICCAT’s own scientific advice on the use of large circle hooks or whole finfish bait in shallow-set longline fisheries (where research shows most sea turtle bycatch occurs) was blocked.
Lastly, ICCAT failed to adopt the advice of its scientific body to protect critically depleted and overfished Atlantic short-fin mako shark stocks. The current short-fin mako measure was extended, punting the issue once again to next year.
We hope you will join our efforts to continue to demand progress for Atlantic Ocean tuna fisheries. More effort is needed to urge precautionary and science-based action at ICCAT. The Commission has set an ambitious agenda of intersessional work next year to address the issues on which no agreement could be found at this year’s meeting. ISSF will continue to work cooperatively with all ICCAT parties and with our diverse, multi-sector stakeholders throughout 2020 to ensure the enduring health of the tunas and ecosystems of the Atlantic Ocean.
Alexia Morgan, Ph.D., is the Science Lead for Tuna and Large Pelagic Species at the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP). Dr. Morgan provides scientific and technical advice to producers and suppliers on key issues related to the fisheries they source from and ways in which they can improve these fisheries, including bycatch issues. In addition to these roles, Dr. Morgan conducts seafood assessments of tuna and large pelagic fisheries for SFP. Previously, Dr. Morgan was a Research Biologist at the Florida Program for Shark Research at the University of Florida and has worked as a consultant for various NGOs on a variety of elasmobranch-related issues. Outside of SFP, Dr. Morgan’s interests and research focus primarily on ecosystem impacts and spatial management of elasmobranch species in the Atlantic. Dr. Morgan has a Ph.D. in Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences from the University of Florida and an M.S. in Marine Biology from Nova Southeastern University.
“Dr. Morgan’s hands-on experience with producers and suppliers coupled with an impressive scientific background will be a significant asset for our team. Her position on the ISSF Environmental Stakeholder Committee continues ISSF’s long-time engagement with the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership,” said ISSF President Susan Jackson.
Mr. Bill Holden is the Senior Fisheries Manager, Oceania & South East Asia, for the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), a global fisheries certification and ecolabel program. He began working with the MSC in February 2009 and is based in the Sydney office. His work involves fisheries outreach in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, with a focus on tuna fisheries. Mr. Holden has a wealth of experience in fisheries management from more than 20 years as an owner, operator and skipper of snapper and tuna longliners in the Kingdom of Tonga. During that time, he was the President of the Fishing Industry Association of Tonga (FIAT) and a director of the Pacific Islands Tuna Industry Association (PITIA). Along with his vast industry experience and knowledge of fishing and marketing operations, Mr. Holden’s work in associations provides him with an understanding of regional management, and he maintains an extensive Pacific network of colleagues, associates and friends. Mr. Holden graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1984 with a B.A. in Political Science and Communications.
“ISSF’s objective is for all tuna fisheries to be capable of achieving MSC certification without conditions. Having regular representation from MSC on ISSF’s Environmental Stakeholder Committee has been important for ISSF,” said ISSF President Susan Jackson. “As our newest ESC member from MSC, Bill brings regional management experience and expertise in the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean that is especially vital to our collaborative work. We look forward to his advice and counsel, especially in that critical part of the tuna-fishing world.”
About the Environmental Stakeholder Committee
The ISSF Board receives information from formal and informal partners — environmental stakeholders marine scientists, fishers, and vessel owners — who share insights from the field.
The ESC comprises expert representatives from various conservation and scientific bodies who volunteer to share their expertise. The ESC, as does ISSF’s Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC), provides advice to the ISSF Board of Directors on issues to consider before taking action on specific sustainability efforts, including regarding ISSF conservation measures that ISSF Participating Companies commit to conform to with the goal of improving the long-term health of global tuna fisheries.
As part of its commitment to foster transparency and accountability in the fishing industry, ISSF engages third-party auditor MRAG Americas to assess ISSF participating seafood companies’ compliance with ISSF conservation measures according to a rigorous audit protocol.
The November 2019 report is based on updates to the initial annual audit results published in April 2019, wherein some companies had “minor” or “major” non-conformances with conservation measures in 2018:
The April 2019 annual report showed that one company had a major non-conformance, which had been remediated as of the November 2019 report’s release.
There were no other instances of major non-conformance in 2018.
ISSF also noted in the November 2019 report that eight participating companies had at least one minor non-conformance, for a total of nine minor non-conformances.
MRAG Americas defines a minor non-conformance as: “Company does not fully comply with a particular conservation measure or commitment, but this does not compromise the integrity of ISSF initiatives.”
The rate of full conformance for each period since participating-company compliance reporting began is reflected below:
Annual compliance report
Update to annual compliance report
June 2015: 79.8 percent
No Update report published in 2015
June 2016: 87.2 percent
November 2016: 95.6 percent
May 2017: 97.5 percent
November 2017: 100 percent
June 2018: 97 percent
November 2018: 99 percent
April 2019: 98.5 percent
November 2019: 99 percent
“As we close a year of celebrating ISSF’s decade of discovery, we are pleased to reflect on consistent years of company-specific, third-party compliance reporting,” said ISSF President Susan Jackson.
“There’s been a 100 percent success rate in ISSF participating companies addressing major non-conformances for the last three audit years, and these companies have regularly surpassed 90 percent in their rate of full conformance with a growing list of ISSF conservation measures. The ISSF audit and compliance process holds industry participants to a higher, completely transparent, standard, making sustainability a core part of their overall strategy.”
The Update to ISSF Conservation Measures & Commitments Compliance Report is published each November to track ISSF participating companies’ progress in conforming with ISSF conservation measures like these:
New Measure During Audit Period: Transactions only with those longline vessels whose owners have a policy requiring the implementation of best practices for sharks and marine turtles
In addition to the summary compliance reports published in April and November, MRAG Americas issues yearly individual ISSF participating company reports that detail each company’s compliance with all ISSF conservation measures. These include “update” reports, published throughout the year, that explain how individual companies have remediated any non-conformance on the conservation measures.
More Information about ISSF Conservation Measures & Compliance
For long-term tuna sustainability, tuna companies worldwide choose to participate with ISSF, follow responsible fishing practices, and implement science-based conservation measures. From bycatch mitigation to product traceability, ISSF participating companies have committed to conforming to a set of conservation measures and other commitments designed to drive positive change — and to do so transparently through third-party audits.
Biodegradable fish aggregating devices (FADs) are made with natural materials that can break down over time and are less harmful to the marine environment. In contrast, traditional FADs are made with man-made materials that, when not retrieved after fishing, persist in and pollute the oceans. We’re working with fishers, scientists and industry to find the best non-entangling designs and natural materials for fish aggregating devices (FADs) that can biodegrade. This video offers an overview of recent workshops that are part of this ongoing effort.
The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) today announced the adoption of a new conservation measure requiring that fishing vessels have publicly available fish aggregation device (FAD) management policies to comply with ISSF supply-chain recommendations for marine ecosystem health. These policies must be in line with science-based best practices outlined in ISSF’s report, “Recommended Best Practices for FAD Management in Tropical Tuna Purse Seine Fisheries.”
“Since ISSF’s founding 10 years ago, we’ve prioritized better management of FADs and the reduction of bycatch and other marine ecosystem impacts across all oceans,” explains ISSF President Susan Jackson. “This new conservation measure gives leading seafood companies a clear framework, based on years of scientific research, in sourcing tuna from vessels that are following best practices in designing, deploying, and recovering FADs — and also in reporting FAD data to Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs).”
ISSF Conservation Measure 3.7 Transactions with Vessels or Companies with Vessel-based FAD Management Policies, approved by the ISSF Board of Directors to take effect in 2021, states that ISSF participating companies shall conduct transactions only with those purse seine vessels whose owners develop and make public FAD management policies that include the activities purse seine and supply vessels are undertaking (if any) on the following elements:
Comply with flag state and RFMO reporting requirements for fisheries statistics by set type
Voluntarily report additional FAD buoy data for use by RFMO science bodies
Support science-based limits on the overall number of FADs used per vessel and/or FAD sets made
Use only non-entangling FADs to reduce ghost fishing
Mitigate other environmental impacts due to FAD loss including through the use of biodegradable FADs and FAD recovery policies
For silky sharks (the main bycatch issue in FAD sets), implement further mitigation efforts
Helping global tuna fisheries become capable of achieving Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification without conditions has long been an ISSF objective, and improved FAD management is an important component of meeting the MSC standard. Conservation Measure 3.7 is ISSF’s second measure focused on FADs specifically, and its tenth measure focused on bycatch mitigation in tuna fisheries.
Supply Chain Conservation Measure Expanded to Include FisheryProgress.org and MSC-certified Fisheries
ISSF conservation measures directly affect how 26 global seafood companies that are ISSF participating companies environmentally manage their respective tuna supply chains.
In addition to purchasing tuna from Supplier Source categories — peer ISSF participating companies, ISSF Data Check companies, direct from vessels — ISSF participating companies now can source tuna from an expanded array of sources represented by these Fishery Source categories:
Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)-certified fisheries eligible to use the MSC label
Comprehensive FIPs listed on FisheryProgress.org scoring A, B or C or in their initial listing on Fisheryprogress.org
Comprehensive FIPs listed on FisheryProgress.org scoring D or E
By January 31, 2020, and annually thereafter, to comply with measure 2.4, participating companies must publicly report the percentage of tuna sourced from the Supplier Source and/or Fishery Source categories.
About ISSF Conservation Measures & Compliance Process
ISSF is a global partnership among scientists, the tuna industry and the environmental non-governmental community whose mission is to undertake science-based initiatives for the long-term conservation and sustainable use of tuna stocks, reducing bycatch and promoting ecosystem health.
Since its inception in 2009, ISSF has adopted conservation measures and commitments to facilitate this mission with the intent that processors, traders, marketers and others involved in the seafood industry will follow them to facilitate real and continuous improvement across global tuna stocks. Each ISSF participating company commits to conform to these conservation measures to improve the long-term health of tuna fisheries. They also must adhere to the ISSA Compliance Policy.
ISSF-participating tuna companies, which represent the majority of the world’s canned-tuna production and include well-known brand names, are audited yearly by MRAG Americas on their compliance with ISSF conservation measures.
In the Atlantic Ocean region, managers will soon have the opportunity to improve the sustainability of their tropical tuna fisheries. And given the inaction at last year’s meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), this year’s to-do list is especially urgent.
Bigeye and Yellowfin Stock Health Must Improve
ISSF is again urging action to protect two tuna species in the Atlantic Ocean region — bigeye and yellowfin. The latest data definitively indicate that the region’s bigeye tuna stock is overfished and subject to overfishing.
Meanwhile, a recent, more optimistic assessment of yellowfin tuna is due only to changes in data models and assumptions — not to better management. The yellowfin stock has been declining and will soon become overfished if recent catch levels continue. For both bigeye and yellowfin, the total allowable catch or TAC (a control measure that limits the overall catch for a specific fish stock, as agreed to by managers) has been surpassed in recent years. Exceeding a TAC diminishes the ability of a stock to rebuild to healthy levels.
Our organization, the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation — in an appeal echoed by our many stakeholders — is therefore asking fisheries managers at ICCAT to act decisively at their annual meeting this month. We urge the adoption of stock-specific management measures for yellowfin and bigeye that are consistent with scientific advice, including:
Appropriate and fully-allocated TAC levels
Capacity limits that are commensurate with the TAC allocations
Provisions to ensure catches are in compliance with the TACs
Procedures to identify and sanction violations of the current TAC allocations
Further Conservation Measures to Reduce Bigeye, Yellowfin Mortality
In addition to the above actions, ISSF and its partners are calling on ICCAT to adopt complementary conservation measures that can reduce the mortality of bigeye and yellowfin tuna in the purse seine fishery. Such measures include: strengthened FAD management, limitations on the use of supply and support vessels, and expanded time/area closures and effort controls such as a seasonal closure.
ICCAT must strengthen its management of its tuna fisheries by also adopting in-season monitoring of tuna catches, including discards, to prevent vessels and fleets from exceeding catch limits.
FAD Management Is Fundamental to Healthy Fisheries
Our focus on strengthened measures to improve bigeye and yellowfin stock health includes better FAD management at ICCAT. With approximately 50 percent of the Atlantic’s tropical tuna caught using FADs, progress toward sustainable tuna must include improving how fisheries managers regulate FAD use. Strengthened FAD management can address overfishing as well as effective tuna management overall.
Unfortunately, managers at ICCAT are severely constrained in their work to manage FADs due to a lack of data. Despite a long-standing requirement for the submission of FAD data for scientific use, only a handful of the fishing nations operating in the ICCAT region are submitting these required data each year. What little data is submitted is often incomplete, which hinders stock assessments and broader fisheries analyses by the ICCAT scientific committee.
Consequently, our list of FAD management requests includes data-focused asks; specifically, we urge ICCAT managers to:
Review member country compliance with FAD limits and reporting obligations and take corrective measures, including the adoption of procedures to identify and sanction non-compliance with these requirements
Require the submission of FAD position data and acoustic records from echo-sounder buoys to national fisheries departments on a real-time basis and to national research institutes on a time-delay basis
Adopt a FAD marking scheme based on the FAO Guidelines on the Marking of Fishing Gear to apply to all FAD deployments, regardless of vessel type
Consistent with our work to reduce marine ecosystem impact from commercial fishing, we’re also asking that ICCAT act at this year’s meeting to: transition toward the use of fully non-entangling FADs; require the use of biodegradable materials in FADs; and require fleets to remove entangling FADs found in the water. ISSF has resources to support ICCAT in these areas, including our Non-Entangling and Biodegradable FADs Guide and Recommended Best Practices for FAD Management in Tropical Tuna Purse Seine Fisheries.
As we head off to the ICCAT meeting, we hope you will join our efforts to urge progress on these priorities by advocating for action before and during the upcoming meeting. You can do this by meeting with:
National delegations that will be tabling proposals and making the decisions at the meeting
Vessel and industry representatives that attend as part of these national delegations and who exercise influence over the positions their governments take
FIPs, tuna processors, retailers, and buyers to encourage them to also advocate for this concrete action at ICCAT
We continue to work cooperatively with all ICCAT delegations to achieve positive results for the tunas and ecosystems of the Atlantic Ocean.
Of the total commercial tuna catch worldwide, 81% came from stocks at “healthy” levels of abundance, according to the October 2019 International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) Status of the Stocks report. In addition, 15% of the total tuna catch was from overfished stocks, and 4% was from stocks at an intermediate level of abundance.
Albacore and skipjack stocks in all four major tuna fishing regions are rated as healthy, but several tuna stocks worldwide are considered overfished:
The Atlantic Ocean bigeye and Indian Ocean yellowfin tuna stocks are overfished and overfishing is taking place.
Noting the high uncertainty levels in stock assessments, ISSF is taking a cautious view and considers that the Eastern Pacific Yellowfin and Bigeye tuna stocks are experiencing overfishing and that the Yellowfin stock is overfished.
Overfishing is occurring on the Pacific bluefin tuna stock and the stock is heavily overfished.
ISSF publishes its signature Status of the Stocks report twice each year using the most current scientific data on 23 major commercial tuna stocks.
Key Statistics in the Report
Abundance or “spawning biomass” levels: Globally, 61% of the 23 stocks are at a healthy level of abundance, 17% are overfished and 22% are at an intermediate level.
Fishing mortality levels: 78% of the 23 stocks are experiencing a well-managed fishing mortality rate, and 22% are experiencing overfishing.
Total catch: In 2017, as reported in the new report, the total major commercial tuna catch was 4.9 million tonnes, a decrease of 2% from 2016. More than half of the total catch (56%) was skipjack tuna, followed by yellowfin (30%), bigeye (8%) and albacore (5%). Bluefin tunas (three species) accounted for 1% of the global catch. These percentages changed only slightly from the previous Status of the Stocks report.
Largest tuna catches by stock: The five largest catches in tonnes, unchanged since the previous report, are Western Pacific Ocean skipjack, Western Pacific Ocean yellowfin, Indian Ocean skipjack, Indian Ocean yellowfin and Eastern Pacific Ocean skipjack.
Tuna production by ocean region: More than half (52%) of the world’s tuna is harvested from the Western and Central Pacific Ocean, followed by the Indian Ocean (20%), Eastern Pacific Ocean (13%) and Atlantic Ocean (11%). Catch from Pacific-wide stocks accounts for around 3% of the global catch, while catch in the Southern Hemisphere accounts for less than 1%.
Tuna production by fishing gear: 65% of the catch is made by purse seining, followed by longline (11%), pole-and-line (8%), gillnets (4%) and miscellaneous gears (12%). These percentages have not changed since the previous report.
The Status of the Stocks report is reviewed by the ISSF Scientific Advisory Committee, which provides advice on its content. The report does not advocate any particular seafood purchase decisions.
About the Report
There are 23 stocks of major commercial tuna species worldwide — 6 albacore, 4 bigeye, 4 bluefin, 5 skipjack, and 4 yellowfin stocks. The Status of the Stocks summarizes the results of the most recent scientific assessments of these stocks, as well as the current management measures adopted by the RFMOs. Updated several times per year, Status of the Stocks assigns color ratings (green, yellow or orange) using a consistent methodology based on three factors: Abundance, Exploitation/Management (fishing mortality) and Environmental Impact (bycatch).
ISSF produces two reports annually that seek to provide clarity about where we stand — and how much more needs to be done — to ensure the long-term sustainability of tuna stocks: the Status of the Stocks provides a comprehensive analysis of tuna stocks by species, and the Evaluation of the Sustainability of Global Tuna Stocks Relative to Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Criteria provides scores for the stocks and RFMOs based on MSC assessment criteria. The MSC-certified fisheries list (Appendix 2) in Status of the Stocks complements the Evaluation report. Together, these tools help to define the continuous improvement achieved, as well as the areas and issues that require more attention.
In addition, ISSF maintains a data-visualization tool based on its Status of the Stocks report. The “Interactive Stock Status Tool” is located on the ISSF website and accessible through the Status of the Stocks overview page; users can easily toggle through tuna stock health indicators and filter by location, species and other key stock health and catch factors.
