Spanish tuna certified

The certification applies to yellowfin tuna in the Eastern and Western Pacific and in the Atlantic, skipjack tuna in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans, and bigeye tuna also in the Western Pacific – the first time for a fishing operation across all four oceans.

It is also the first purse seine fishery including both free school and fish aggregating device sets to achieve certification in the Atlantic Ocean.

“The certification of the AGAC association fleet is a milestone for the sustainability of tuna, both due to the number of vessels involved, the fishing operations considered, and the different tuna populations analysed simultaneously,” said Laura Rodríguez, MSC program director Spain & Portugal.

“We congratulate AGAC for this decade of exhaustive work to demonstrate best practices in tuna fishing and for its long-term commitment to preserving this important resource.”

AGAC entered its entire fleet of 44 purse seine vessels, covering 12 tropical tuna stocks, for assessment in 2020. Of these, fishing operations on six stocks were found to meet the standards meaning that around half of AGAC’s catch is now MSC-certified.

This achievement is the result of more than 10 years’ work to improve sustainability including a fisheries improvement project started in 2016 and the introduction of a code of good practice in 2012. AGAC members also invested in new technologies, operations and research to the tune of more than €17 million.