New Zealand seafood company Sealord has announced that its canned tuna products will soon be FAD-free – new supplies of Sealord Yellowfin Tuna will be FAD-free from July this year and the rest of the range will be FAD-free by early 2014.
Sealord became New Zealand’s first signatory of WWF’s Western Central Pacific Tuna Conservation Pledge in January this year. Since then the company has been assessing the various options to ensure that Sealord tuna has the lowest possible bycatch.
“We have worked through Sealord’s tuna sustainability goals with our suppliers and we now believe the quickest way to ensure bycatch is below our initial target of less than 1%, is to source tuna caught without FADs,” said General Manager New Zealand, Stu Yorston.
The use of fish aggregating devices has bycatch levels in the Western Pacific of around 1.7% of catch, which is low compared to other methods such as pole and line and longlining for other fish species, but higher than the average rate for tuna caught without this equipment.
Sealord says that through on-going research improvements continue to be made to the FAD fishing method, and that over time it is likely FAD-caught tuna will have bycatch below 1%. “Until then Sealord has decided to move to tuna caught on free school sets (without FADs)”, says a news release, implying that the company may well return to using FADs in the future.
