The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) has spent over a decade bringing together tuna stakeholders to enhance the sustainability of the stocks – and that effort is working.
ISSF has been collaborating with a broad set of stakeholders, including ship captains, harvesters, processors, distributors, retailers, NGOs, RFMOS, and scientists, since 2009 to improve the management and health of tuna stocks. That effort has shown clear outcomes – according to ISSF’s Status of the Stocks report, close to 100 percent of the 5.8-million-ton global tuna catch in 2024 came from stocks not experiencing overfishing – up from 71 percent in 2011.
While increasing the amount of tuna caught from sustainable stocks is a core goal, a lesser known but integral part of ISSF’s science-driven conservation and tuna advocacy are the organization’s ProActive Vessel Register (PVR) and Vessels in Other Sustainability Initiatives (VOSI) programs. ISSF said the two programs help create transparency in tuna supply chains on key issues of concern for tuna buyers, sustainability initiatives, and tuna conservation – and also help companies and stakeholders by making it easier to navigate the complicated world of seafood sustainability.
Unfortunately, when multiple “incentives” for sustainability develop organically – and separately – they can become impediments to progress rather than incentives. For seafood companies, misalignment and too many conflicting requirements often result in a separate and unique due diligence process for each new customer.
Keeping on top of all of the individual requirements eventually becomes unsustainable, both limiting the number of suppliers who can or are willing to comply with a buyer’s distinct purchasing requirements.
ISSF’s PVR and VOSI program creates efficiencies for companies by getting input from key stakeholders in a process designed to identify the most valuable information to multiple stakeholders and focus reporting on those elements. This also helps build stakeholder support for reporting criteria.
“Conservation has always been at the core of ISSF and so has the recognition of the need for credible, transparent verification to ensure companies are doing what they say they are doing. We have always been strong on the science,” ISSF President Susan Jackson said. “What we've gotten better about over time is how we communicate the measurable progress being made across tuna fisheries and supply chains. We recognize that one of the most credible forms of advocacy is demonstrating implementation of science-based best practices.”
ISSF participating companies are independently audited on compliance with ISSF conservation measures, their public reporting on implementation, and performance. ISSF developed additional vessel-level transparency tools as commitments expanded through tuna supply chains.
The PVR and VOSI are two tools that help vessels publicly communicate verified information about sustainability practices and commitments. Vessels on the PVR are independently audited on compliance with ISSF conservation measures, and implementation status is reflected directly in the searchable PVR tool. The PVR registry can be searched by vessel name, UVI number, RFMO region, or other attributes.
Vessels that have made public sustainability commitments beyond those reflected on the ProActive Vessel Register are eligible to be listed on the VOSI. VOSI tracks a range of vessel-level sustainability initiatives allowing participating vessels to report on different combinations of practices and commitments.
Criteria include participation in a fishery improvement project (FIP), Marine Stewardship Council improvement program or pre-assessment, fish aggregating device-related initiatives, electronic monitoring, and best practices for shark, turtle, and seabird interactions. The VOSI register includes over 1,200 vessels including over 2,900 verified vessel-level sustainability commitments and practices.
“In addition to promoting public reporting and credible reporting on commitments and the good work in tuna fisheries, the PVR and VOSI – and the transparency they make possible – are also important for credibility within the NGO community. NGOs are an important partner for advocacy to RFMOs, and they can play an important role in shaping retailer procurement policies,” Jackson said. “If the work being done by different stakeholders is reinforcing rather than contradicting, we have made it much easier for industry to engage and more likely we can improve practices.”
ISSF said its approach has always been collaborative in nature – including a broad section of stakeholders in the development of its programs and tools. In the case of the PVR and VOSI, collaboration returned real operational efficiencies for companies and real supply chain value for the marketplace.
Seafood companies have a number of incentives to collect data about their sourcing – improved internal controls, communicating with external stakeholders, participation in an improvement program, meeting buyer requirements and transparency expectations, or reporting on company commitments.
Through its tools, ISSF is better able to drive efficiency and value through alignment around data collection, and it is also able to use audit data, feedback from participating companies, stakeholder input, and trends in implementation to further conservation goals and improve transparency and verification practices in tuna supply chains.
“Our number one area of investment is science, and we are constantly turning that investment into intelligence for our work and our partners,” Jackson said. “We have had over 5,000 fishers and crew that have now have participated in our outreach programs; we have worked with echosounder buoy manufacturers and purse seine skippers to help improve their adoption. Much of the development on biodegradable fish aggregating devices (FADs), for example, has been done in very close partnership with fleets in different parts of the world. Through our data collection work, we can track how new innovation is being adopted, while PVR and VOSI allow us to communicate where the adoption of science-based practices is growing.”
ISSF also shares these learnings with key partners through activities like its retailer roundtables and participation in the NGO Tuna Forum. Along with informing the work of partner organizations, the science and information ISSF generates informs broader regional fishery management organization (RFMO) discussions and approaches related to harvest strategies, transparency, and monitoring initiatives, for example. Like better alignment on data requirements, better alignment on strategies simplifies the “why” and “how” for industry engagement.
“Seventy-three retailers and foodservice companies from around the world reference in their published procurement specifications ISSF conservation measures, participation in ISSF, and/or the PVR and the VOSI which is testament to the process we have created,” Jackson said. “Things can get complicated so quickly when you are working on tuna management and international supply chains. The simpler we can make things for companies, the easier the adoption of responsible practices becomes. More adoption means more impact. More impact means more conservation value generated for more resilient tuna fisheries and supply chains.”
