July 28, 2025 — Kauaka Petaia guided his motorboat out of Tuvalu’s main lagoon at dawn and into the vast Pacific Ocean, where he and his nephew scanned the rolling horizon for signs of their country’s most precious resource: tuna.
They searched for more than two hours before finally spotting seagulls circling in the distance. Petaia threw open the throttle as his nephew, Ranol Smoliner, tossed a hooked line into the water. Soon, the younger man felt the tug of a 25-pound yellowfin, which he pulled up and bashed with a club. By morning’s end, the pair had caught eight tuna — a haul far smaller than when Petaia’s father taught him to fish 30 years earlier.
“We have to spend longer and go farther to get them,” the 48-year-old said as the fishermen unloaded their catch.
“I’m not sure there will be any tuna left by the time I’m my uncle’s age,” added Smoliner, 22.
Tuna is a pillar of life in the Pacific, where for centuries people have braved the ocean to bring back yellowfin, skipjack, bigeye and albacore for their families.
In recent decades, as global demand for tuna has soared, Pacific island nations including Tuvalu have propped up their struggling economies by selling licenses to allow international fishing companies to trawl their vast exclusive economic zones. These seas provide as much as one-third of the world’s tuna supply.
But climate change is warming the world’s oceans at an accelerating rate, threatening livelihoods.
Scientists predict that climate change will push tuna away from Pacific island nations and toward the high seas, where wealthier countries with large fishing fleets – China, Japan, South Korea and the United States – will catch them without paying license.