By Edward Carver
Much of the world’s albacore tuna catch, which usually ends up in a can, comes from the southwestern Pacific Ocean, where fishery managers just passed a new set of conservation rules.
The parties to the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), a multilateral body that sets fishing rules for an area that covers nearly 20 percent of the planet, adopted a harvest strategy for South Pacific albacore at their annual meeting, held 1-5 December in Manila, the Philippines.
Harvest strategies set near-automatic scientifically advised catch limits or other control measures in response to fluctuating fish stock levels; they’re considered a best practice in fisheries management because they reduce commercial or political influence. South Pacific albacore is one of two albacore (Thunnus alalunga) stocks in the WCPFC; the other is North Pacific albacore, which isn’t fished as much.
“This is a great move for the WCPFC,” Dave Gershman, a senior officer for international fisheries at The Pew Charitable Trusts, a U.S-based think tank, told Mongabay after attending the meeting. “This is a critical step to ensure the sustainability and stability of the top Pacific albacore fisheries.”
Gershman noted that the harvest strategy was a “long time in the making” and had been “discussed for many, many years.”
The parties discussed, but didn’t adopt, new rules on transshipment, or the ship-to-ship transfer of fish and other goods at sea, a practice that’s been linked to illegal and unsustainable fishing and other illicit activity.
Glen Joseph, director of the fishing ministry of the Marshall Islands, a WCPFC member state, said the meeting thus delivered both positives and negatives.
“We successfully pushed the Harvest Strategy,” Joseph told Mongabay in an email, noting the role of the Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), a bloc of 17 island nations including the Marshall Islands that tends to act in unison at the WCPFC, in pushing reforms. “We were not so successful with the transshipment issue,” he added.
A deal finally done
South Pacific albacore isn’t considered overfished and its stock is at about 48 percent of its historical levels, which is higher than many commercially fished stocks. Yet experts have argued that a harvest strategy is essential to the stock’s long-term health and that current management is “outdated.” WCPFC parties were spurred to action in part because the Marine Stewardship Council, a London-based ecolabel certification NGO, had signalled that from 2026 it wouldn’t certify South Pacific albacore fisheries that weren’t under a harvest strategy.
China and Taiwan harvest the most South Pacific albacore, but a number of smaller Pacific nations and territories also fish enough that it’s important to their economies. Longline vessels, which drop huge numbers of baited hooks into the sea, do most of the fishing. The economic value of albacore in the WCPFC area is about US$1 billion per year, mostly from South Pacific albacore, according to Pew.
The new harvest strategy sets 56,096 metric tons per year as a sort of baseline harvest rate — lower than the roughly 65,000 metric tons that were harvested in 2024 in the part of the WCPFC area where the rules will apply, from 10-50° south. However, in coming years, the total allowable catch will remain above 56,096, because the rules stipulate that it can only be decreased by 5 percent per three-year period.
The exact figures for the first management period, 2027-29, will be determined next year. So will rules about how much of the catch can come from the high seas versus countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZs).
The parties couldn’t reach an agreement on the harvest strategy at the 2024 annual meeting and so they discussed it at two intersessional meetings in 2025 — and then it dominated the meeting time in Manila in early December, with a deal being reached only in the final hours.
“It’s been looked at up and down, back and forth, sideways,” Gershman said.
Taiwan accepted the deal — WCPFC measures are adopted by consensus, so it wouldn’t have passed otherwise — but its delegation had pushed for a higher baseline rate, emphasizing that the stock is not overfished nor experiencing overfishing.
“This reduction will require us to further downsize our longline fleet in the area and will result in hundreds of fishers and crew members, mainly from developing states members, losing their jobs, with significant impacts on their families’ livelihoods,” a spokesperson for Taiwan’s fisheries agency who declined to be named, citing agency policy, told Mongabay in an email.
The Global Tuna Alliance, an industry trade group focused on sustainability, commended the adoption of the harvest strategy, saying in a press release that it will bring stability for industry actors and coastal states.
This is the third harvest strategy adopted by the WCPFC, following one for skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis) in 2022 and another for North Pacific albacore in 2023. New harvest strategies for both Pacific bluefin (T. orientalis) and bigeye tuna (T. obesus) could be adopted at the 2026 WCPFC annual meeting.
The WCPFC, which has 26 member parties including the European Union, was rated the highest among 16 of the world’s regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs) in terms of its management policies in a recent paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The ratings were based on how RFMOs measured on 100 criteria as of December 2021, so they don’t account for the WCPFC’s harvest strategies. Other RFMOs have also adopted harvest strategies in recent years.
Tussle over transshipment
Despite that best-in-class rating, the WCPFC, which manages more than half of the world’s tuna catch, has plenty of room to improve its management practices, NGO representatives say. One of the most contentious issues in Manila was rules regarding transshipment, as they have been for many years.
WCPFC has had a transshipment measure on the books since 2009. But the measure has a loophole allowing transshipment when it’s “impracticable” for fishing vessels to land their catch at port. China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, which together dominate longliner fishing in the region, use transshipment frequently, saying that alternatives are impracticable. Conservation NGOs, members of the FFA bloc including the Marshall Islands and labor advocates disagree.
“Members that rely on high seas transshipment have effectively ignored the [2009 measure] and sought to maintain the status quo of transshipment as the rule, rather than the exception, in direct contravention of [the measure],” reads a position statement issued by Sharks Pacific, a Cook Islands-based NGO, at the Manila conference, echoing a strong statement submitted by the FFA in 2024.
At an intersessional meeting in September, the Marshall Islands put forward a proposal to tighten the rules on transshipment in a way that would largely eliminate the practice. In Manila, South Korea countered with its own proposed reform measure to safeguard and monitor transshipment.
Bubba Cook, Sharks Pacific’s policy director, said the South Korean proposal was not “significant” or “genuine.” He noted that transshipment was not just a conservation problem but also a human rights issue, as it “exacerbates the potential” for abhorrent labor practices akin to slavery, the likes of which would never be tolerated in land-based work.
The Union of Indonesian Migrant Workers (SBMI), which represents fishing industry workers, and Accountability.Fish, a U.S-based advocacy group, argued similarly in an intervention in Manila that called for an end to transshipment.
“At-sea transshipment keeps crews cut off from oversight for long periods, leaving them exposed to exploitation with little chance of protection or escape,” their statement said.
Taiwan’s fisheries agency spokesperson said Taiwan supports strengthening transshipment monitoring but that high seas transshipment was “very important for our longline fleet” and needed to continue.
“Taiwan has never opposed meaningful and constructive efforts to strengthen transshipment measures,” the spokesperson said. “What we are against is proposals of unreasonable measures that would have [an] effect on or eliminate the operation of high-sea transshipment.”
The Chinese, South Korean and Japanese delegations didn’t reply to requests for comment for this article.
In the end, WCPFC members reached no agreement on transshipment and left the matter for 2026.
Other steps
The WCPFC parties adopted a seabird protection measure that slightly changes existing rules.
As longlines are set, seabirds target the bait, get caught on the hooks, then drown as the hooks sink. An estimated 11,000-25,000 seabirds were killed annually in the WCPFC convention area between 2015 and 2018, including 4,000-4,600 albatrosses and petrels south of 25° south, according to an observer submission from UK-based NGO BirdLife International at the Manila meeting.
The new measure will require longliners to employ two bycatch mitigation methods out of three possible choices for much of the convention area below 25° south, similar to current rules below 30° south. The three options are weighted lines that cause hooks sink to faster, “tori lines” that deter birds from a vessel’s stern, and setting lines at night when birds are less active. Vessels also have the option to use hook shield devices as a standalone method. The new measure designates certain areas where only one of the three methods will be required. It will take effect in 2028.
But she said the measure didn’t go far enough. She argued that two of the three mitigation measures should have been applied without exception, or even all three below 30° south, which was proposed. She also said the 2028 start date was too late and that WCPFC needed to strengthen its compliance regime for existing and forthcoming rules. The failure to take stronger action “frankly demonstrates the failure of RFMOs to actually manage the impacts to ecologically related species,” she said in a text message to Mongabay.
The WCPFC adopted a groundbreaking crew welfare measure at the 2024 annual meeting that will take effect in 2028. Leading up to this year’s meeting, SBMI pushed for “accelerating and ensuring readiness for implementation,” and the International Labour Organisation, a U.N. body, has already taken steps to help, according to Cook.
Cook said South Korea now has a policy in place that requires crew welfare checks once per year, and its vessels are coming to port more often in the Marshall Islands as a result. He also cited some apparent progress on Taiwanese-flagged vessels. The spokesperson for Taiwan’s fishing agency said human rights at sea had “long been a priority” for the Taiwanese fishing agency and pointed to a 2022 national action plan on the topic and more recent reports.
“I think it’s fair to say that Taiwan’s relevant human rights improvement measures are not directed by the 2024 WCPFC [measure],” the spokesperson said.
