Farming of Bluefin Tuna–Reconsidering Global Estimates and Sustainability Concerns

Abstract

Increased global demand for bluefin tuna has triggered unsustainable fishing and many wild stocks have seen dramatic declines. Improved fisheries governance is now slowly stabilizing many stocks and recently bluefin aquaculture has emerged as an economic alternative route for supplying the market. Most of captured bluefin tuna directly enters the global seafood market, but an increasing part of catches are destined to aquaculture (17–37%) as bluefin aquaculture almost exclusively depends on wild specimens for stocking. Farming is mainly being performed in the Mediterranean region, Mexico, Australia, and Japan. Few studies have focused on the global importance and future role of bluefin aquaculture and there are confounding uncertainties related to production volumes and trends. This study provides an overview of global bluefin tuna aquaculture and identifies its direct and indirect interactions with wild fish stocks, outlines some of the challenges for future expansion as well as pointing out significant mismatch of production statistics.

Keywords:

• aquaculture
• fattening
• production statistics
• governance
• small pelagic fish

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Kazuhito Watanabe for his help getting data. MM and AB are Nippon Foundation Senior Nereus Fellows.

Additional information

Funding

The Nereus Program supports MM's and AB's research. SP is thankful to University of Montpellier 2 and the Erasmus program for having facilitated and supported his internship at Stockholm Resilience Center. This research was also supported by Mistra (the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research) through a core grant to the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University.