Western Pacific Council and US Delegation Work Toward Fair International Tropical Tuna Management Measure By Mark Fitchett, PhD Tropical tunas consist of skipjack tuna and ahi—both yellowfin and bigeye tuna. Bigeye tuna is considered a Pacific-wide stock that is managed and assessed separately by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) and Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (see map). The Hawai‘i deep-set fishery primarily targets the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) bigeye tuna stock. This stock is not overfished according to a 2020 assessment and criteria described in the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council’s Pelagic Fisheries Ecosystem Plan. In the WCPO, tuna is harvested across a range of fishing gears, with primary impacts from longline and purse seine fisheries. Longline fisheries target adult fish that have a chance to spawn while purse seine fisheries target smaller, sub-adult fish, which are in high
abundance in tropical regions. Purse seine fisheries target skipjack tuna (mostly as canned tuna) and catch small bigeye incidentally when setting their nets on schools of fish, often of mixed species, that assemble under floating objects called fish aggregating devices (FADs). Skipjack
Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission and Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission areas of jurisdiction. Source: NOAA.
