Featured Report Benchmarking Tuna RFMO Performance against the U.N. FAO Agreement on Port State Measures (PSMA) From minimum standards for inspector training to advance notice of port entry, report identifies IUU-mitigation gaps and opportunities ISSF’s report Port State Measures in Tuna RFMOs: Benchmarking RFMO Port…
Featured Content BLOG: All Hands on Deck for Threatened Manta and Devil Rays Doctoral student Melissa Cronin of the University of California, Santa Cruz, was awarded the Grand Prize in ISSF’s Seafood Sustainability Contest in March 2020. Ms. Cronin won for her entry, “Incentivizing…
Featured Content Transparency Matters “In my 35 years as a fisheries scientist and policy expert, I’ve come to believe that every discussion somehow revolves around transparency. In science, for example, what information underlies our analyses? In policy, how can people trust our decisions and their…
Featured Content Report Rates State of Tuna Stocks Worldwide Of the total commercial tuna catch worldwide, 87.6% of the global catch continues to be sourced from stocks at “healthy” levels of abundance, according to the current Status of the Stocks report. In addition, 9.6%…
ISSF Responds to IOTC Annual Meeting Outcomes
At their recently concluded annual meeting, Indian Ocean tuna fisheries managers made minimal overall progress for the long-term protection of the region’s tuna stocks. IOTC agreed on a new measure for yellowfin tuna. And while ISSF is pleased that many IOTC delegations worked together to…
No Fishing Method Is Without Impact, But Collaborative Efforts Are Making Fishing with FADs More Sustainable
Though fishing with fish aggregating devices (FADs, or more generally, floating objects) has been in practice for hundreds of years, the amount of FADs being used by purse seine vessels has increased steadily in the last two decades. In 2019, the last year for which we have complete data,…
New Measure for ISSF Participating Companies Highlighted in Position Statement for June 2021 IOTC Annual Meeting
The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) today announced a new ISSF conservation measure (CM) requiring its participating companies to reduce annual sourcing of Indian Ocean yellowfin tuna. ISSF Conservation Measure 1.3 IOTC Yellowfin Tuna Rebuilding becomes effective in the event that the Indian Ocean Tuna…
Complementary Compliance Report Shows 99.4% Participating Seafood Company Conformance Rate with Science-Based Conservation Measures
The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) released its 2020 annual report today, titled Staying the Course, which presents the organization’s tuna-fishery sustainability achievements during an unprecedented year of challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. “The ISSF team did more than just ‘keep on keepin’…
International Seafood Sustainability Foundation Appoints Thai Union Group’s Global Director of Group Fish Procurement to Chair; William Gibbons-Fly, former U.S. Department of State Lead Fisheries Negotiator, Also Joins Board
The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) announced today the appointment of Kevin Bixler as Chair of its Board of Directors. Mr. Bixler, Global Director of Group Fish Procurement for Thai Union Group, succeeds Luciano Pirovano, Director of Sustainable Development for Bolton Food, in the role….
Scientists, like almost everyone else, were forced to accept a new normal in 2020. We found ourselves sharing workspaces with our remote-learning children. Traveling much less often, as movement restrictions rendered certain projects downright unfeasible. And collaborating with colleagues virtually, rather than face-to-face—which meant missing…