A powerful new collaboration among three ocean sustainability organisations is set to transform transparency in global tuna supply chains.
Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP), Global Fishing Watch (GFW) and the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) are sharing key data to help seafood buyers assess environmental impacts and compliance more easily.
“We aren’t reinventing the wheel,” said Kathryn Novak, biodiversity and nature director at SFP.
“We’re making it easier for tuna buyers to use all of the valuable, existing data and resources by putting them together on a platform they’re already familiar with and connecting it with their sourcing.”
Made possible by grant funding from the Walmart Foundation, the effort will use widely-used platforms like SFP’s FishSource and Seafood Metrics, ISSF’s Proactive Vessel Register and Vessels in Other Sustainability Initiatives, together with GFW’s Vessel Viewer and Marine Manager tools.
Together, these systems provide insights not just on fish stock health, but also on bycatch, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, and vessel-level sustainability practices.
The collaboration tackles longstanding challenges in tuna fisheries, particularly the lack of vessel-level monitoring. Observer coverage remains below 5% in many longline tuna fleets, and critical data on bycatch and fishing practices is often fragmented.
“We value our partnership with SFP, whose retailer-facing platforms and policy engagement ensure that sustainability commitments are rooted in science, transparency and measurable progress,” said Susan Jackson, president of ISSF.
Charles Kilgour, director of program initiatives at GFW, added, “By integrating key data sources into a familiar platform, we’re helping industry better target risk and strengthen accountability.”
