The Blue Marine Foundation, an environmental non-governmental organization, has criticized U.K. retailers that claim to oppose the use of drifting fish-aggregating devices (dFADs) while still selling tuna caught using them.
Blue Marine Foundation’s Head of Investigations Jess Rattle, the author of the study, said there are startling disparities between U.K. retailers’ own-label canned tuna and the brand-name tuna they sell alongside it.
U.K. retailers are well aware of the damage that dFADs cause to fragile marine habitats and important tuna stocks, according to Rattle, evidenced by many acknowledging the consequences of such practices in their own-label sourcing policies. However, they then turn a blind eye to brand-name, FAD-caught tuna on their shelves, Rattle said.
A new Blue Marine Foundation report, “The U.K.’s Tuna Blind Spot,” has found that several knowingly continue to sell brand-name canned tuna stemming from purse-seine fleets.The report is the culmination of a six-month collaborative investigation by ocean conservation charity Blue Marine Foundation, Greenpeace UK, and French NGO Bloom that traces the origins of the canned tuna sold in the U.K.
The three organizations are now calling on U.K. retailers to stop selling tropical tuna caught using dFADs in the Indian Ocean by not entering into any new supply agreements for tuna caught in this manner, regardless of whether they are own-label or brand-name tuna products.
The report determined that of the U.K.’s top 10 supermarkets, Marks & Spencer is the only one able to prove that none of the canned tuna sold in its stores originates from FAD-assisted catches.
“Several other retailers including the Co-op, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons all have tuna sourcing policies that clearly prohibit the use of drifting FADs. However, this concern for sustainability extends only as far as their own-label products and no further, with all four supermarkets also found to be selling brand-name tuna like John West (owned by Thai Union) and Princes (owned by the Mitsubishi Corporation) which source tuna from fleets that use drifting FADs in the Indian Ocean,” the Blue Marine Foundation said in a press release. “The report found that Iceland has the worst canned tuna sourcing policy of all, by virtue of it only selling this same brand-name tuna.”
Rattle said U.K. grocery market leaders Tesco and Aldi use Marine Stewardship Council certification as a precondition of their own-label sourcing, but that more than half of all MSC-certified tuna comes from fisheries that rely on FADs, according to a recent Mongabay report.
Rattle told SeafoodSource none of the other U.K. retailers contacted during the investigation “sufficiently indicated” they will be changing their policy to one that prohibits the sale of tuna caught around dFADs.
The Blue Marine Foundation report condemned the European Commission for objecting to a conservation and management measure that would prohibit the use of dFADs for a 72-day period in the Indian Ocean annually, saying the E.U.’s objection exempts Spain’s and France’s commercial tuna purse-seine fleets from abiding by such a rule.
“What we need in the Indian Ocean is a closure period where no dFAD fishing is allowed to take place,” Rattle said. “A 72-day closure was adopted by a two-thirds majority in February 2023. However, [the] E.U. has since objected to this in the Indian Ocean, despite supporting similar measures in other oceans where its fleets do not fish as much and despite the overfished status of two out of three of the region’s tropical tuna stocks.”
In response, BLOOM and the Blue Marine Foundaiton have decided to take legal action against the commission, filing a formal letter with the European Commission claiming the E.U.’s objection violates E.U. law, Rattle said. The submission of the letter requires the E.C. to review the objection.
The publication of Blue Marine’s report coincides with the publication of a Bloom report titled “Willful Ignorance,” ranking 36 European retailers on their sourcing policies. Bloom Markets Campaign Manager Pauline Bricault said the evaluation shows that all E.U. retailer policies fall “far short of the mark” when it comes to tropical tuna.
“One element that stood out was the absence of measures preventing overfished tuna caught with destructive industrial gears making it onto their shelves,” Bricault said. “Even worse, we found that some of these products were even misleadingly labeled as [sourced from] ‘responsible fishing.’”
In a follow-up to the report, BLOOM issued a formal warning against French retailer Carrefour alleging it violated the French Duty of Vigilance Law in its tuna sourcing.
The Blue Marine Foundation said there are some possible solutions to the issue, including using non-entangling and biodegradable drifting FADs that can help mitigate the large number of FADs that are lost or discarded and contribute toward plastic pollution, marine habitat damage, and animal bycatch. However, the NGO said no solution currently exists that help avoid the mass capture of juvenile bigeye and yellowfin tuna, which is of particular concern in the Indian Ocean, where both species are overfished and where 97 percent of the yellowfin tuna caught around dFADs by purse-seine vessels are juveniles.
“Non-entangling dFAD designs do nothing to prevent the capture of millions of juvenile tuna,” Rattle said. “However, non-entangling designs are already mandatory in the Indian Ocean under IOTC Resolution 19/02. Despite this, anecdotal evidence submitted to the IOTC by Kenya shows ‘persistent noncompliance with this resolution.’”
Image courtesy of Bloom
