The five collectives in charge of managing the world’s tuna fisheries are failing to mitigate by-catch, according to a new report launched at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress last week in Korea.
The report assessed the performance of 13 regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) in governing bycatch and discards and found “widespread deficiencies.” The overall scores ranged from 1 percent to 58 percent, with all five tuna RFMOs scoring below 50 percent.
The Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), which is responsible for tuna and other marine resources in the eastern Pacific Ocean, had the highest score of the tuna RFMOs and attained an average of 44. The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), which governs an area that supplies the majority of the global tuna catch, closely followed with 42, while the Commission For the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT) scored 24. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) and the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) performed the worst out of the five, finishing with 20 and 17 respectively.
The RFMOs were graded against the five criteria of monitoring, access to data, ecological risk assessment, controls, and surveillance.
