Saving Seafood

Deep-sea mining poses potential threat to tuna fishing in Eastern Pacific Ocean

July 12, 2023 — Research published in the science journal Nature Ocean Sustainability has found deep-sea mining is likely to pose a threat to bigeye, skipjack, and yellowfin tuna populations in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

Climate change is pushing migratory tuna populations into geographies that overlap with areas allocated for deep-sea mining, according to the study, “Climate change to drive increasing overlap between Pacific tuna fisheries and emerging deep-sea mining industry,” published 11 July.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

IATTC fails to adopt tuna conservation measures, makes shark progress

July 5, 2016 — The annual meeting of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) ended on 1 July in La Jolla, California, without the adoption of new measures for the management of tropical tuna and for the conservation of bluefin tuna, though progress was made on shark conservation and on fishing aggregating device (FAD) management.

Members of the Regional Fisheries Management Organization (RFMO) responsible for the conservation and management of tuna and other marine species in the Eastern Pacific Ocean could not agree on the recommendations by scientific experts to extend the fishing closure for bigeye and yellowfin tuna to a total of 82 days in order to ensure sustainable fisheries in the region while accommodating for the recent increase in fleet capacity.

These discussions will resume at an extraordinary meeting to be held in October.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

NMFS Reopens Bigeye Fishing for Hawaii’s Longliners Through Quota Agreement With Mariana Islands

SEAFOODNEWS.COM — October 13, 2015 — NMFS will allows Hawaii’s longline tuna vessels to resume bigeye fishing efforts in Western and Central Pacific Ocean through an agreement with the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

According to NMFS the Islands have a 2,000 metric ton catch limit of longline-caught bigeye tuna and can allocate up to 1,000 mt each year to US longline fishing vessels in a specified fishing agreement that is consistent with established regulations.

Agreement was welcomed for approximately three dozen Hawaii longline vessels that are larger than 24 meters in length. These larger vessels have been banned from fishing not only in the WCPO but also in the Eastern Pacific Ocean since Aug. 12, 2015. According to another international agreement, the US longline fleet has a quota of 500 mt in EPO after which US longline vessels less than 24 meters in length only can operate in those waters.

NMFS determined that the fleet had reached its 2015 US bigeye tuna limit of 3,502 mt. The limited supply during the closure, saw prices for bigeye tuna (`ahi) skyrockety at the Honolulu fish auction to as high as $13.70 per pound.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.