Saving Seafood

Tuna value dropping, industry must plan ahead: report

October 7, 2020 — Tuna is holding steady as a $40 billion-a-year business, but commercial fisheries worldwide are hauling in bigger catches of dwindling value, threatening the long-term survival of some species, according to a new report.

“Fisheries caught 500,000 more metric tons in 2018 than in 2012, but were paid $500 million less in dock value,” study co-author Grantly Galland, an officer with The Pew Charitable Trusts’ international fisheries group, told AFP.

Unless governments that regulate the industry through regional management bodies adopt long-term strategies, everything from supermarket tuna to $100-a-portion sashimi could wind up in short supply, the report warned.

Crashing populations of skipjack, bigeye, yellowfin and bluefin would also jeopardise livelihoods and disrupt ecosystems in which the top-level predators play a critical role.

Read the full story at Yahoo! News

Population of prized tuna species decline as protections ease in the Gulf of Mexico

September 14, 2020 — The recent easing of tuna protections in the Gulf of Mexico and fishing restrictions elsewhere in the Atlantic Ocean may be contributing to rapid and widespread declines for one of the most highly prized but critically threatened tuna populations.

A new report by an international tuna conservation commission indicates the stock of Atlantic bluefin tuna has plummeted to just 13% of its levels 70 years ago. The fish, one of the most valuable seafoods in the world, had shown signs of recovery in recent years, thanks partly to robust protections the U.S. enacted five years ago in the Gulf – the only major spawning area for western Atlantic bluefin. Those protections were eased this year by President Donald Trump’s administration.

“These are big concerns,” said Grantly Galland, a marine biologist with Pew Charitable Trusts. “We had early signals of recovery but raising the fishing quota and now getting rid of the protections in the Gulf of Mexico means the western population of bluefin is under threat again.”

Read the full story at NOLA.com

ICCAT keeps bigeye catch limit, to conservationists’ dismay

November 20, 2018 — Conservationists left Croatia on Monday, 19 November, expressing disappointment that the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas did not pass any measure to protect the stock of bigeye tuna.

Instead, commission members ended their meeting in Croatia’s capital of Dubrovnik maintaining the status quo; a catch limit of 65,000 metric tons for the 2019 season, despite an ICCAT scientific committee reporting that the Atlantic bigeye is severely overfished.

Grantly Galland, a global tuna conservation for The Pew Charitable Trusts, said it was a difficult eight days.

“Everyone is to blame for this one,” he told SeafoodSource. “Each individual member is more concerned about its own priorities than finding consensus on a real recovery plan.”

The current biomass is currently at 20 percent of its historical peak, Galland said. In order to generate the maximum sustainable yield, the biomass needs to be at least at 59 percent.

Because of the inaction, Galland fears the bigeye tuna issue will only get exponentially worse. Pew said the current catch rate means the stock is 60 times more likely to collapse instead of rebuild in the next 15 years.

Read the full story at Seafood Source