Fisheries Newsletter No 153 (May–August 2017)

Editorial

In 2016, scientists from the Pacific Community estimated that bigeye tuna stocks in the western and central Pacific were ‘overfished and overfishing was still occurring’. In 2017, according to the latest assessment that was undertaken by the same group of scientists: ‘bigeye tuna stock is not overfished and overfishing is not occurring’. Nature can be generous, but such a rapid change in the assessment cannot only be due to good fortune and it requires further explanation. Although Mother Nature did play a role in the increased number of fish that are able to reproduce (the spawning biomass), most of the upturn is due to a change in some of the scientific parameters that were used for the assessment. John Hampton, SPC Chief Scientist (Oceanic Fisheries), explains the situation in detail in his excellent article ‘What is going on with bigeye tuna?’.

Based on past assessments, the management decisions that were made to reduce fishing pressure on bigeye tuna probably impacted the revenue of tuna fishing companies and those who are responsible for tuna fishery management at the country level will find it difficult to explain the change; however, at least they will be announcing ‘good news’.

‘On the positive side’ as John notes in his conclusion ‘it does seem as though the science process has worked as it should’. While some degree of uncertainty always remains with stock assessments, it now seems likely that bigeye is out of the red zone and joined the other three main tuna stocks of the western and central Pacific – skipjack, yellowfin and albacore – in the green zone. Let’s hope sound scientific processes followed by wise management decisions will keep them there for many years!

Aymeric Desurmont
Fisheries Information Specialist