The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) released its annual “Status of the Stocks” report in July 2022, finding global tuna catches are increasingly coming from healthy stocks.
Since its last “Status of the Stocks” report in March 2022, the percentage of total commercial tuna catch worldwide harvested from stocks at “healthy” levels of abundance has increased from 80.5 percent to 86.4 percent. ISSF reports this increase is mainly due to the recent change in rating for the Eastern Pacific Ocean skipjack stock.
ISSF’s “Status of the Stocks” is a twice-yearly report, covering 23 major commercial tuna species worldwide, providing results of the most recent scientific assessments of these stocks and the current management measures adopted by regional fishery management organizations. ISSF covers four albacore fisheries in its report, along with four bigeye fisheries, four bluefin fisheries, five skipjack fisheries, and four yellowfin fisheries.
ISSF assigns color ratings (green, yellow, or orange) to each fishery based on three factors: abundance, exploitation/management (fishing mortality), and environmental impact (bycatch). A color rating of green indicates there are minimal sustainability concerns with the stock, yellow indications sustainability concerns but adequate corrective measures in place, and orange indicates sustainability concerns with no adequate corrective measures in place.
The most-recent report found a restoration in the Eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO) skipjack tuna stock, which represents 6 percent of the global tuna catch, resulting in the restoration of its rating of green. The EPO skipjack tuna stock had been downgraded from green to yellow in ISSF’s March 2022 report due to a lack of a recent stock assessment by the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), which manages the fishery.