For the first time since ISSF began tracking these stocks in 2011, none of the world’s 23 major commercial tuna stocks are classified as overfished — and 97% of the global tuna catch now comes from stocks at healthy abundance levels. The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) published these findings in its January 2026 C.E. Status of the Stocks report, with results announced on February 9, 2026 C.E. It is the most positive snapshot of global tuna health the ISSF has ever documented.
At a glance
- Tuna stock health: 74% of the 23 major commercial tuna stocks are now at a healthy level of abundance — up nine percentage points from the March 2025 C.E. assessment — while the remaining 26% sit at an intermediate level and none are overfished.
- Overfishing rates: 96% of stocks are not experiencing overfishing, with roughly 4% at an intermediate level, a five-percentage-point improvement from the previous report.
- Global tuna catch: Total worldwide catch of major commercial tuna species reached 5.8 million tonnes in 2024 C.E., an 11% increase from 2023 C.E., with skipjack making up 58% of that total.
A milestone decades in the making
The numbers mark a striking turnaround. In 2011 C.E., just 70% of the global tuna catch came from stocks at healthy abundance levels, and only 71% came from stocks not experiencing overfishing. The January 2026 C.E. figures — 97% and nearly 100%, respectively — represent the highest values ISSF has ever recorded on both measures.
Victor Restrepo, ISSF Vice President of Science, said the results “reflect years of sustained investment in science-based fisheries management.” That investment has played out across regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) — the international bodies that set catch limits and monitor stock health across the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans.
The shift matters because tuna are not a single commodity. The report covers 23 distinct stocks across five main species: skipjack, yellowfin, bigeye, albacore, and bluefin. Getting all of them out of the overfished category at the same time, while total catch was rising, is exactly the kind of outcome that fisheries scientists have been working toward for a generation.
Which stocks improved
Several individual stocks moved meaningfully up the ratings scale between the March 2025 C.E. and January 2026 C.E. reports. Atlantic bigeye tuna moved from yellow to green. Indian Ocean yellowfin also moved from yellow to green. Both Pacific bluefin and Indian Ocean bigeye shifted from orange to yellow — meaningful progress for two stocks that have historically attracted concern.
The ISSF uses a color-coded system — green, yellow, and orange — to rate each stock separately for abundance and for fishing mortality. The absence of any red or “overfished” rating across all 23 stocks is what makes this report unprecedented.
By gear type, purse seining accounted for 66% of global tuna production, followed by longline at 9%, pole-and-line at 7%, gillnets at 3%, and miscellaneous methods at 15%. The five largest individual catches came from Western and Eastern Pacific skipjack and yellowfin stocks, plus Indian Ocean skipjack and yellowfin.
Harvest strategies are helping
One structural shift underpins much of the progress: roughly 52% of the global catch now comes from stocks with formally adopted harvest strategies in place. These are pre-agreed rules that specify how fishing effort should adjust as stock conditions change — removing the politics of year-to-year negotiation and replacing it with automatic, science-driven responses.
Recent additions include harvest strategies for South Pacific albacore and Western Atlantic skipjack, both adopted by their respective RFMOs. The ISSF has long identified harvest strategy adoption as a key lever for sustaining healthy stocks over time, and the rising share of catch covered by these frameworks is a sign that the lever is being pulled.
The ISSF Scientific Advisory Committee reviews each Status of the Stocks report, and the foundation publishes updates several times per year as new assessments arrive from the RFMOs. That cadence matters: stock ratings can — and do — change as new data comes in, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has consistently noted that tuna management requires ongoing vigilance, not a single moment of success.
What still needs work
The ISSF is explicit that these gains are not self-sustaining. Continued management, expanded harvest strategy adoption, and improved monitoring are all listed as necessary conditions for holding the current trajectory. About 4% of stocks remain at an intermediate overfishing level, and the intermediate abundance category still covers 26% of all stocks — meaning more than a quarter of the tuna being caught are not yet at their most productive population levels.
There are also equity dimensions the numbers alone don’t capture. Small island developing states in the Pacific depend on tuna access fees for a substantial share of government revenue, and the distribution of economic benefits from healthier stocks does not automatically flow to the communities most dependent on the ocean. Monitoring of non-target bycatch species — including sharks, rays, and sea turtles — remains an ongoing challenge across gear types, particularly in purse seine fisheries that account for nearly two-thirds of all tuna caught.
Still, the January 2026 C.E. report is a genuine milestone. Getting every major commercial tuna stock out of the overfished category, while global catch rose 11% year over year, is not an outcome that happens by accident. It is the product of international cooperation, consistent scientific monitoring, and the slow, unglamorous work of fisheries management across dozens of jurisdictions and ocean basins.
For an ocean that has absorbed decades of pressure, that is real progress worth marking.
Read more
For more on this story, see: ISSF Status of the World Fisheries for Tuna, January 2026
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
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- The Good News for Humankind archive on marine conservation
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