December 4, 2020 — The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission will hold its regular annual session from 7 to 15 December, with the renewal of the tropical tuna measure on bigeye, skipjack, and yellowfin billed as the main topic up for discussion.
The meeting, WCPFC17, has been complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced the commission to meet virtually, according to WCPFC Executive Director Feleti Teo.
December 12, 2019 — Pacific bigeye, yellowfin, albacore, and skipjack tuna are all reported to be in healthy condition, according to a 2018 stock assessment announced this week during the 16th Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) meeting in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
The Pacific Community’s (SPC) stock assessment report stated that the estimate of the total tuna catch in the WCPFC Convention Area for 2018 is 2,790,859 metric tons (MT), which represents 81 percent of the total Pacific Ocean catch of 3,443,174 MT, and 54 percent of the global tuna catch, which was 5,172,543 MT.
February 8, 2019 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is looking for help in tagging tuna.
The Atlantic Ocean Tropical Tuna Tagging Program was established by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas in 2015 to study key aspects of bigeye, skipjack, and yellowfin tuna in the Atlantic Ocean.
As part of the AOTTP, Dr. Walt Golet from the University of Maine and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute will be working with colleagues at the New England Aquarium, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, University of Miami, and NOAA Fisheries to deploy 5,000 conventional tags on tuna in the western North Atlantic Ocean.
The effort will stretch from Canada to Venezuela and also includes the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.
Those interested in participating in the AOTTP project and would like to volunteer to tag bigeye, skipjack, and yellowfin tuna, can contact Dr. Walt Golet at walter.golet@maine.edu.
NOAA says every fish tagged will give participants a chance to win one of 20 individual cash prizes, totaling more than $39,000, to be awarded at the end of the project.
September 15, 2016 — The following was released today by the American Bluefin Tuna Association, in response to President Obama’s decision to designate a new Marine National Monument off the coast of Cape Cod:
The American Bluefin Tuna Association (ABTA) represents 27,000 commercial, charter/headboat and recreational fishermen who fish for Bigeye, Yellowfin, Bluefin and Albacore tuna. ABTA is deeply saddened to hear of President Obama’s decision today to designate a marine monument in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts. All of the aforementioned fish species are found and fished by our fishermen within the newly designated monument.
ABTA’s fishermen have the distinction of employing the most sustainable fishing methods of any oceanic fishery in the U.S. ABTA’s commercial fishery is the U.S.’s only artisanal fishery, as defined by the United Nations Fish and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) and by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). ABTA fishermen catch one fish at a time, using handgear, with negligible bycatch and its commercial fishermen have the highest record of compliance with fishery regulations of any such fishery in the world.
ABTA’s takeaway from the Administration’s decision to designate an Atlantic marine monument:
A negative message
Abandoning the open, democratic and thoroughly science-based process by which we undertake to establish protections for important marine attributes in favor of a monument established by executive fiat sends a negative message to those U.S. fishermen and shoreside industries who would needlessly pay for this monument by loss of income. It also sends a negative message to the majority of our fishermen who are committed to adhering to the processes and respect for regulation promulgated in accordance with the Magnuson Stevens Act. The decision is a clear denouncement of the democratic institutions that are charged with safeguarding the public interest as it pertains to oceanic marine matters. U.S. fisheries, in particular those fisheries that are found in the proposed area, are already the most highly regulated such fisheries in the world.
Absent strong, verifiable scientific support for such an action, creating a marine monument based upon vague and unsupported concerns “for the future”, can be likened to such expressions as “better safe than sorry” or “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. These are fairly vacuous guidelines for safeguarding the environment and for public policy in general.
David Schalit, Vice President
American Bluefin Tuna Association
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.
July 5, 2016 — A respected research professor, scientist and part-time resident has been on Kauai for several weeks coordinating the latest phase of a tuna tagging project launched on Kauai and the Big Island three years ago.
Dr. Molly Lutcavage is a research professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston’s School for the Environment. She is also director of the Large Pelagic Research Center and is renowned for her extensive work with the Atlantic bluefin tuna fishing community.
The Ahi Satellite Tagging Project of the Pacific Island Fisheries Group is a joint venture that uses state-of-the art technology and partners fisheries organizations, policy makers and local fishermen in the effort to gather much-needed baseline data on ahi and other pelagic fish that live and migrate in waters surrounding the main Hawaiian islands and beyond.
“There’s very little information on these patterns for ahi in this region,” Lutcavage said.
“Most of PSAT or data logging tags on ahi were deployed in the eastern and western Pacific, so the Hawaiian islands remain a ‘data poor’ area as far as high-tech tag results,” she added.
Last week, six large yellowfin tuna (ahi) were tagged with pop-up satellite tags and released in waters off Kauai. If all goes well, the tags will collect data that will help identify their migration routes and behavior for one year, Lutcavage said.
June 3, 2016 — In the wake of the 20th session of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission meeting, we join our fellow stakeholders in applauding the IOTC for adopting a harvest control rule (HCR) for skipjack tuna that is consistent with scientific advice. The adoption of this initial skipjack HCR is the culmination of significant work, investment and advocacy by many parties – nations, industry, NGOs, scientists and retailers – and it paves the way for refinement as the management strategy evaluation work continues. Harvest strategies, which include HCRs and reference points, are an essential component of modern, science-based fisheries management.
Unfortunately, there was limited political will to act to similarly protect yellowfin tuna and other stocks that are currently experiencing overfishing or that are overfished. While a reduced catch of yellowfin was adopted, scientific guidance indicates that the agreed catch reductions are insufficient. The new measure amounts to a reduction in catch of about 10%, just half of the IOTC Scientific Committee’s recommended 20% reduction and insufficient to arrest the current declining trend in stock status or rebuild the stocks to sustainable levels by 2024.
There is also a significant risk that, without further action, these measures that are effective 1 January 2017, could result in the fishery breaching the fishing mortality limit and the stock declining below the biomass limit established by the Commission. Finally, with delays of up to two years on reporting of data and the high levels of non-compliance by IOTC members, the new yellowfin measure may be largely unenforceable.
Continued efforts to develop harvest strategies for yellowfin, bigeye and albacore are essential, and we support the Commission’s workplan developed and adopted at its 2015 meeting to that end. ISSF and WWF will support this critical process so that all stocks are on par with the skipjack stock’s management status.
Read the full story at the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation
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