Now that the Australian Marine Parks have been finalised, the Australian longline fishery is looking to invest significantly and develop opportunities. One company in Australia’s eastern tuna and billfish fishery…
The Spanish tuna fleet, acting jointly through OPAGAC, has begun the process to enable canned tuna distribution and processing companies to earn chain-of-custody certification from AENOR.
Galician company Grupo Calvo, which was recently the first to launch canned tuna with an MSC label, has signed a contract with the Freire yard in Vigo for a new tuna purse seiner.
Chinese owned longline yellowfin and bigeye tuna fishery in the Federated States of Micronesia has achieved Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification for its bigeye tuna catch. This is the first time that bigeye has been certified to the MSC’s globally recognised standard for sustainable fishing.
Five stocks of tropical tuna caught by the Spanish tuna fleet, out of a total of 12, now meet the sustainability standards necessary to apply for MSC certification, specifically yellowfin, skipjack and bigeye in the Central-Western Pacific and yellowfin and skipjack in the Eastern Pacific.
Fish will fly when Australia’s seafood capital hosts its iconic Tunarama Festival this weekend, and the population of Port Lincoln more than doubles during the annual event with twenty thousand visitors heading to South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula for Tunarama.
A study by the Spanish tuna fleet in the Indian Ocean, three years after the introduction of its Code of Good Practice, integrated into its Fisheries Improvement Project (FIP), shows that the contribution of the purse seine gear to the mortality of main by-catch species is practically zero, compared to figures recorded for other gears such as longlines and drift nets. This study estimates levels of fishing mortality at 0.15%, for sharks and rays (Chondrichthyes), less than 0.3%, for turtles and zero for marine mammals.
French tuna company Saupiquet, part of the Bolton Group, has placed an order for a new 67 metre tuna purse seiner to be built at Piriou’s yard in Vietnam with a 2020 delivery date. The new vessel will become the latest addition to the series of eight 80-90 metre tuna vessels delivered by Piriou from both its Vietnam and Concarneau yards since 2010 for several tuna operators.
Thai Union Group has commissioned its €21 million Thai Union Marine Nutrients tuna oil refinery, located in Rostock, to produce highly refined tuna oil.
Nine days of intense discussion on Atlantic tunas at the ICCAT plenary meeting has resulted in disappointment with the failure to able to reach a consensus to revise the management plan for tropical tunas, in particular for bigeye tuna, which is considered to be overexploited by ICCAT’s scientific committee.