Saving Seafood

NOAA Fisheries intercepted illegal tuna shipment destined for US grocery chain

June 3, 2025 — NOAA Fisheries has fined a U.S. grocery chain USD 12,516 (EUR 10,961) for illegally importing yellowfin tuna.

According to the agency, NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Law Enforcement collaborated with Virginia Conservation Police and U.S. Customs and Border Protection on a joint inspection of a container shipment at the Centralized Examination Station in Chesapeake, Virginia, U.S.A. Inside, law enforcement found more than 1,100 pounds of jarred yellowfin tuna with a declared value of USD 4,889 (EUR 4,281) destined for a grocery store chain.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Climate change is robbing Pacific islands of another resource: Tuna

February 19, 2025 — Fourteen Pacific island nations will receive $107 million to adapt their tuna-dependent economies as climate change pushes the fish farther from their shores, the Green Climate Fund announced Tuesday.

The fund’s largest grant-only project to date, the money will be used to create an advanced warning system to enable Pacific island nations to track changes in tuna migration and potentially pursue compensation when warming waters drive the fish from these countries’ exclusive economic zones.

“These are the countries that contribute the least to the climate crisis and now are going to lose a resource that they have collectively stewarded better than any other ocean basin,” said Jack Kittinger, senior vice president at Conservation International, the Arlington, Virginia-based nonprofit environmental organization that led the research behind the grant. “This is the ultimate climate justice issue.”

Read the full article at The Washington Post

The Truth About Tuna

September 30, 2024 — Ahi steak. Akami sashimi. Albacore on sourdough. Whether you smoked yellowfin on the grill or spread skipjack on a sandwich, chances are you’ve had tuna recently.

On average, Americans eat around two pounds of the fish per year, more than any other seafood except for shrimp and salmon. And for good reason: Tuna is tasty and versatile, and the canned variety costs as little as a dollar.

But is it good for you? Should you be worried about its mercury content? And what about the health of our oceans? Here’s what to know before you pop open that next can for lunch.

Tuna is about as nutritious as a food can be.

It’s packed with protein, minerals and vitamins, said Chris Vogliano, a dietitian and research director at the educational nonprofit Food and Planet. It has more selenium than just about any other meat. It’s also low in fat, Dr. Vogliano noted — but that means it has fewer omega-3 fatty acids than some other seafood.

There’s not a huge nutritional difference between canned tuna, sushi and a tuna steak, he added. Cooking the fish might lower its vitamin D, and the canning process might leach out a few nutrients, he said, but its nutritional value is largely the same.

Tuna’s one big health drawback, experts say, is the risk posed by mercury, a neurotoxin. This heavy metal enters the ocean mostly from human activities like burning fossil fuels. It’s absorbed by small organisms and works its way up the food chain and accumulates in bigger, longer-lived species — like sharks, swordfish and, yes, tuna.

In high enough concentrations, mercury can cause serious health problems. Cases of mercury poisoning are rare in the United States, but experts worry about the long-term effects of mercury on the brain — and elevated levels are often more common among urban and coastal populations that eat more seafood.

So what does this mean for tuna eaters? The answer is nuanced because the amount of mercury depends on the species — and there are 15 types of tuna, all of which could end up on a dinner plate. The smallest (and often cheapest), like skipjack, have very little mercury. Albacore and yellowfin can have three times as much; bigeye and bluefin can have far more, Dr. Vogliano said.

Read the full article at the The New York Times

Read more about the science behind tuna and mercury from the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council

Outcry grows over questionable “vitamin tuna” treatment process

June 11, 2024 — Yellowfin and bigeye tuna steaks and loins sold across the United States – and likely Europe and other markets – are increasingly probable to be tainted with unlisted ingredients, including citric acid, beet extract, and sodium, according to three global seafood executives.

Up to 60 percent of yellowfin tuna steaks exported from Vietnam undergo a process through which they are injected with a saline solution and then bathed in a mixture of beet juice, paprika, and additives like sodium ascorbate and ascorbic acid. After this, they are treated with carbon monoxide or a tasteless, or clear, smoke. The process vastly improves the coloration of lower-grade tuna and gives the product an added water weight that can increase its value by 15 to 20 percent, the executives said.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

IOTC urged to curtail yellowfin tuna overfishing at upcoming meeting

May 13, 2024 — As the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) meets in Bangkok, Thailand, for its 28th session taking place 13 to 18 May, multiple industry groups and NGOs are urging the commission to tackle overfishing of yellowfin tuna.

The IOTC has been pressured to reduce the total allowable catch for yellowfin tuna for years, and at its 2023 meeting, the committee again failed to reach an agreement on skipjack or yellowfin tuna quotas, or on drifting fish aggregate devices (dFADs). The failure brought heavy criticism from multiple groups, and was in spite of a resolution in June 2021 to rebuild the yellowfin tuna stock.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Pacific Ocean Deep-Sea Mining Could Threaten Tuna ‘Climate Refuge’

July 12, 2023 — A new study has found that deep-sea mining may pose a big threat to tuna species moving into the eastern Pacific Ocean as climate change pushes them into the open ocean.

Dr Diva Amon, a scientific researcher at the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Director and Founder of NGO SpeSeas explains that climate pressures are expected to push bigeye, skipjack and yellowfin tuna from their current range near small, developing Pacific nations into a “climate refuge” in a deep-ocean zone of the eastern Pacific Ocean.

“These tuna are going to be leaving these Pacific Nations and moving into the high seas and progressively eastward,” she says, adding that the highly-mobile tuna might arrive to these new areas only to find it is already inhospitable due to deep-sea mining.

Read the full article at Forbes

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

Hilborn lab finds counterevidence to study claiming MPAs have “spillover” effect

April 2, 2o23 — A new analysis by the University of Washington’s Sustainable Fisheries Lab is countering a study that claims the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, the largest marine protected area (MPA) in the U.S., caused a “spillover effect” in yellowfin tuna.

The study, “Spillover benefits from the world’s largest fully protected MPA,” claimed it found “clear evidence” of spillover effects for both bigeye and yellowfin tuna. A spillover effect refers to when the population of a particular species in an MPA becomes so abundant that it “spills over” into surrounding areas that can be targeted by fishermen.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

IOTC: Indian Ocean yellowfin catch must be cut by 30 percent to save the stock

March 9, 2022 — The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) Scientific Committee has published a new report that provides results on the yellowfin tuna stock assessment in the Indian Ocean. The report shows the stock is overfished and will require a catch reduction of at least 30 percent.

The report is the first issued by the IOTC Scientific Committee since 2018 and includes projections for reasonable likelihood of stock recovery by 2030 if the 30 percent catch reduction is implemented. That means a catch limit of about 301,000 metric tons (MT) – almost 130,000 MT less than was caught in 2020.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource