Saving Seafood

Pacific fisheries summit gives a boost to albacore & seabirds

December 17, 2025 — Much of the world’s albacore tuna catch, which usually ends up in a can, comes from the southwestern Pacific Ocean, where fishery managers just passed a new set of conservation rules.

The parties to the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), a multilateral body that sets fishing rules for an area that covers nearly 20% of the planet, adopted a harvest strategy for South Pacific albacore at their annual meeting, held Dec. 1-5 in Manila, the Philippines. Harvest strategies set near-automatic scientifically advised catch limits or other control measures in response to fluctuating fish stock levels; they’re considered a best practice in fisheries management because they reduce commercial or political influence. South Pacific albacore is one of two albacore (Thunnus alalunga) stocks in the WCPFC; the other is North Pacific albacore, which isn’t fished as much.

“This is a great move for the WCPFC,” Dave Gershman, a senior officer for international fisheries at The Pew Charitable Trusts, a U.S.-based think tank, told Mongabay after attending the meeting. “This is a critical step to ensure the sustainability and stability of the top Pacific albacore fisheries.”

Gershman noted that the harvest strategy was a “long time in the making” and had been “discussed for many, many years.”

The parties discussed, but didn’t adopt, new rules on transshipment, or the ship-to-ship transfer of fish and other goods at sea, a practice that’s been linked to illegal and unsustainable fishing and other illicit activity.

Glen Joseph, director of the fishing ministry of the Marshall Islands, a WCPFC member state, said the meeting thus delivered both positives and negatives.

“We successfully pushed the Harvest Strategy,” Joseph told Mongabay in an email, noting the role of the Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), a bloc of 17 island nations including the Marshall Islands that tends to act in unison at the WCPFC, in pushing reforms. “We were not so successful with the transshipment issue,” he added.

A deal finally done

South Pacific albacore isn’t considered overfished and its stock is at about 48% of its historical levels, which is higher than many commercially fished stocks. Yet experts have argued that a harvest strategy is essential to the stock’s long-term health and that current management is “outdated.” WCPFC parties were spurred to action in part because the Marine Stewardship Council, a London-based ecolabel certification NGO, had signaled that from 2026 it wouldn’t certify South Pacific albacore fisheries that weren’t under a harvest strategy.

China and Taiwan harvest the most South Pacific albacore, but a number of smaller Pacific nations and territories also fish enough that it’s important to their economies. Longline vessels, which drop huge numbers of baited hooks into the sea, do most of the fishing. The economic value of albacore in the WCPFC area is about $1 billion per year, mostly from South Pacific albacore, according to Pew.

The new harvest strategy sets 56,096 metric tons per year as a sort of baseline harvest rate — lower than the roughly 65,000 metric tons that were harvested in 2024 in the part of the WCPFC area where the rules will apply, from 10-50° south. However, in coming years, the total allowable catch will remain above 56,096, because the rules stipulate that it can only be decreased by 5% per three-year period.

The exact figures for the first management period, 2027-29, will be determined next year. So will rules about how much of the catch can come from the high seas versus countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZs).

The parties couldn’t reach an agreement on the harvest strategy at the 2024 annual meeting and so they discussed it at two intersessional meetings in 2025 — and then it dominated the meeting time in Manila in early December, with a deal being reached only in the final hours.

“It’s been looked at up and down, back and forth, sideways,” Gershman said.

Read the full article at Mongabay

U.S. Fights for American Fishing in the Pacific, Leads Electronic Monitoring of International Fleets

December 12, 2025 — Tuna and technology took top priority—and top wins—for the United States at the 22nd Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission meeting. It was held December 1–5, 2025, in the Philippines.

Led by Andrew Lawler, NOAA’s Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Fisheries, the U.S. delegation:

  • Protected American Samoa and U.S. troll interests in the South Pacific albacore fishery
  • Fought for the economic viability of Hawaiʻi’s long line fleet targeting bigeye tuna
  • Secured the lead to develop an electronic monitoring measure for adoption at next year’s meeting

“The U.S. delegation worked very hard together to achieve these wins and, quite frankly, knocked it out of the park,” Lawler said. “We ensured a robust opportunity for our commercial fishing interests while enhancing conservation of our shared fishing resources.”

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

NGOs call for WCPFC to adopt transshipment rules, echo calls for South Pacific albacore management procedure

December 1, 2025 — Environmental NGOs are calling on the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) to adopt new rules for transshipment regulation, electronic monitoring, and fish aggregating devices (FADs) and have joined calls for a new management procedure for South Pacific albacore.

The WCPFC, which is meeting 1 to 5 December, oversees more than half of the world’s tuna catch and includes 26 different member countries.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Pacific Island nations, Global Tuna Alliance urge WCPFC to adopt management procedure for South Pacific albacore

November 21, 2025 — Ahead of the upcoming meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), taking place from 1 to 5 December in Manila, Philippines, Pacific Island nations have developed a joint, science-based proposal for the management of South Pacific albacore.

Simultaneously, the Global Tuna Alliance (GTA) has launched the “Anchor Albacore’s Future” campaign to highlight the importance of adopting a predictable management plan for the tuna species.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

First-of-its-kind crew welfare measure adopted at Pacific fisheries summit

December 11, 2024 — Working on fishing vessels has for centuries been one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. To this day, forced labor and other human rights abuses remain relatively common, with workers from low-income countries especially at risk. But new regulations in the Western Pacific Ocean could make it harder for ship operators to get away with abuses, and could catalyze change in other regions.

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), a multilateral body that sets fishing rules for an area that covers nearly 20% of Earth’s surface and produces half the world’s tuna catch, adopted a landmark crew welfare measure at its recent annual meeting, which took place in Fiji from Nov. 28 to Dec. 3. It’s the first binding labor rights measure adopted by any of the world’s 17 regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs).

The measure is a “step forward for human rights at sea,” Bubba Cook, a program manager at WWF-New Zealand who has advocated for the measure for years, told Mongabay.

“There is no question this is a … mast light for other RFMOs as we chart a course into the future,” Cook said at the meeting’s final plenary, according to a statement he shared with Mongabay. “With this important step, we have acknowledged the humanity of those crew working in challenging conditions around the world to bring seafood to our tables.”

On a personal level, Cook said the measure’s adoption was a “hugely emotional moment” that brought him to tears because a friend of his who disappeared while working in the fishing industry had advocated for human rights at sea and because of the positive impact he said he expects the new rules will have.

The annual meeting otherwise produced what NGO observers described as mixed results. The WCPFC parties adopted a voluntary measure to implement electronic monitoring of catches. This could help with data collection and rule enforcement, particularly on longliner fishing vessels, which have very low rates of catch monitoring by human observers in the Western Pacific.

However, the parties didn’t adopt another measure largely aimed at longliners: a tightening of rules meant to curb potentially dodgy ship-to-ship transfers known as transshipments. Nor did they adopt substantive new protections for sharks and seabirds, and they took no action to open up a key compliance meeting to NGO observers or improve governance more generally, drawing criticism from transparency advocates.

Read the full article at Mongabay

Critics push for more transparency at RFMOs that govern high seas fishing

January 31, 2024 — The organization responsible for managing the catch of more than half the world’s tuna holds a key section of its annual compliance meeting in secret. For three days, a committee of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) assesses how well member states are following fishing rules, without any outside observers present. The WCPFC says the meeting is closed for technical reasons, not to hide bad behavior. But critics contend this raises the possibility that countries with bad-acting vessels operating under their flag may avoid public scrutiny.

Regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) like the WCPFC, which manage fishing in international waters, or the “high seas,” should be accountable to everyone, according to environmental advocates who are making an increasingly vociferous case for RFMOs to become more transparent. RFMOs are, after all, in charge of shared public resources. Yet the public doesn’t always get a seat at the table: many RFMOs block access to journalists and even to NGO observers during sensitive meetings.

When observers are allowed in to RFMO meetings, they’re sometimes restricted in what they can say publicly, especially in real time, as decisions are being made. RFMOs issue reports after meetings, but few explain how parties voted or what positions they took during negotiations.

“When an RFMO puts out a report, it doesn’t say, ‘Country X torpedoed this proposal,’” Ryan Orgera, global director of Accountability.Fish, a Virginia-based advocacy group, told Mongabay. “It simply says, ‘consensus was not reached.’”

The lack of detailed information makes it difficult for reformers to hold countries accountable when they fall short of their environmental commitments: There’s no public pressure because the public doesn’t know where to direct it.

Reformers such as Orgera argue that increased transparency would help RFMOs reach their stated objective: broadly, to manage and conserve fish stocks in the high seas and “straddling” stocks that migrate between the high seas and countries’ exclusive economic zones, which extend 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from shore.

Read the full article at Mongabay

Shark-fishing gear banned across much of Pacific in conservation ‘win’

December 10, 2022 — Industrial-scale fishers will no longer be able to use two types of shark-fishing gear in the western and central Pacific Ocean after the international body in charge of tuna fisheries there agreed to ban the devices.

The measure, adopted last week at the annual meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), is seen as a major and potentially precedent-setting win for conservationists who say urgent action is needed to stave off extinction for many shark populations. Shark numbers in the open ocean have plunged by an estimated 71% in the past half-century, with humans thought to kill 100 million of the animals each year.

“The science was on our side,” Kelly Kryc, the head of the U.S. delegation to the WCPFC, which co-proposed the measure with Canada, said in an interview after the meeting concluded. “By taking these steps, the conservation gains are quantifiable and measurable for vulnerable shark populations like oceanic whitetip and silky sharks.”

The first type of banned gear, shark lines, helps longline fishing vessels hook the ocean predators as opposed to other kinds of fish.

The second type, wire leaders, increases the likelihood of retaining a shark once it’s caught on the line. The animals’ sharp teeth can easily bite through a nylon or monofilament leader (a short segment of line attaching a hook to the main fishing line) as opposed to a leader reinforced with wire.

While the two devices were already outlawed in some countries’ territorial waters, last week’s decision marked the first time that one of the main bodies overseeing tuna fishing in international waters had outright banned their use. The decision may pave the way for other regional fisheries management organizations, or RFMOs, to do the same.

The WCPFC previously outlawed the simultaneous use of wire leaders and shark lines, but vessels could still deploy one or the other. A similar proposal to ban them was not adopted at last year’s meeting.

Read the full article at Mongabay

As shark numbers plummet, nations seek ban on devastatingly effective gear

November 28, 2022 — Famed undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau had a favorite shark: the oceanic whitetip, or Carcharhinus longimanus. He said they were the most dangerous of all sharks, more so than the great white (Carcharodon carcharias).

Some researchers believe the species used to be one of the world’s most abundant vertebrates longer than 6 feet (1.8 meters).

Today, however, the animal is one step away from extinction, pushed to the brink by overfishing.

While sharks are often pulled up accidentally by boats hunting other fish, especially tuna, many vessels target them intentionally, hoping to harvest their fins, meat, and, sometimes, their teeth and internal organs. Such vessels often make use of special tools known as wire leaders and shark lines, whose use is minimally regulated by the multilateral bodies that govern international fishing grounds.

Now, those devices may finally face a reckoning.

In a bid to save the oceanic whitetip, the U.S. and Canada have asked the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), which governs tuna fisheries in those waters, to prohibit the use of wire leaders and shark lines.

The WCPFC could vote on the proposal at its annual meeting, to be held next week in Da Nang, Vietnam.

Read the full article at Mongabay

WCPFC to vote on skipjack harvest strategy, PNA wants it to be non-binding

October 28, 2022 — The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) will consider adopting a management procedure (MP) for skipjack tuna, but members of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) are hesitant to commit to them.

The measure will be taken up at the WCPFC’s 19th regular session, taking place 27 November to 3 December in Da Nang, Vietnam. The PNA said its member-states want any MP proposals to be just an item taken into account when setting conservation and management measures, rather than a hard-and-fast rule.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Western Pacific Council Recommends New Approach for Pacific International Discussions

December 16, 2021 — Recent international Pacific tuna talks were deemed “unfavorable” for U.S. interests, according to fishery managers in Hawaii.

The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council had hoped to convince the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission to almost double the Hawai‘i longline fishery bigeye tuna catch limits. The Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee supported it and the Council had worked on the increase for the past six years.

The U.S. delegation also asked the Commission to reduce the total catch on South Pacific albacore, with a goal of increasing albacore catch rates for fisheries such as American Samoa.

But the Commission disagreed. It disagreed with all of the U.S.-recommended changes.

Read the full story at Seafood News