Mixed bag for management procedures in the Atlantic

November 24, 2025

AuthorShana Miller
Project Director, International Fisheries Conservation

I write this from Seville, Spain where the gavel has just dropped on the annual meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). After a long 8 days of negotiations, we’ve ended with both high notes and disappointments for management procedure (MP) development and implementation at ICCAT.

First, the high notes:

The Commission adopted an MP for western Atlantic skipjack tuna as the first dedicated management for the stock. The effort was led by Brazil on both the science and management sides, having been initiated by the renowned Brazilian scientist, Dr. Fabio Hazin. Brazil championed the proposal in Seville, with the United States as a co-sponsor, and the final version will set future total allowable catch limits (TACs) for the stock in 3-year blocks. The results of the management strategy evaluation (MSE) were presented in www.HarvestStrategies.org’s Shiny App, Slick, for ICCAT member review and consideration when selecting the final MP. Western skipjack is a unique fishery at ICCAT as more than 90% of the catch is caught by one fleet, the Brazilian baitboat fishery. As a low bycatch handgear fishery, now with a long-term MP in place, the fishery can proudly say they’re a world leader in sustainable management.

Next, an exceptional circumstances protocol (ECP) was adopted for North Atlantic swordfish as an annex to the MP adopted last year, completing the MP. Canada’s proposal outlines the rare or unforeseen scenarios that could warrant reconsidering the application of the MP, as well as a decision tree for how to handle related deliberations on both the science and management sides. This ECP is a bit more flexible than prior ones adopted by ICCAT, largely due to this year’s experience with the exceptional circumstances review for ICCAT’s most iconic and controversial species, Atlantic bluefin tuna.

Which brings us to the hottest topic – and one of the disappointments – of ICCAT 2025:

This year marked the end of the first management cycle of the Atlantic bluefin tuna MP adopted in 2022, a huge step forward for the species that had once been the posterchild of overfishing, leading to ICCAT being called “an international disgrace” and a travesty in fisheries management.” In addition to running the adopted MP to set the western and eastern TACs for the next management cycle (2026-28), ICCAT scientists also did their standard annual check for exceptional circumstances. And that’s where things got more complicated.

New science using genetic analysis methods produced the first census estimate of the size of the western stock that spawns in the Gulf of Mexico. The scale of the western population size was one of the most influential uncertainties in the MSE, so having a point estimate represented a major step forward for bluefin science. However, ICCAT scientists could not agree on whether the new information constituted an official exceptional circumstance, as laid out by the ECP, since the new point estimate of stock biomass falls within the range considered in the original MSE. Nonetheless, ICCAT scientists did a light revision of the MSE and subsequently updated the original MP, providing two separate MPs and associated TACs to the Commission as the scientific advice – BR, the originally adopted MP, and BR*, the new revised MP.

This unfortunately opened the door to extensive negotiations here in Seville on the MP and how to implement it. After days of debate on 10 separate formal proposals, ICCAT ended by continuing to operate under the originally adopted BR MP, but with incomplete implementation. The adopted eastern measure implements the MP-based TAC (near final draft here). However, in the West, the new measure sets a TAC 20% higher than allowed under the originally adopted MP, with an extra 100 t transfer from the East to the West to use for bycatch in the vicinity of the West/East management boundary. The final TAC represents a 17% increase in the western TAC, counter to the MP.

This is not how the MP process is supposed to work. First, the ECP for Atlantic bluefin tuna is very clear. The first step is to answer the question, “Is there evidence of an exceptional circumstance?” If the answer is yes, then further investigations should be considered, such as revising the MP. But ICCAT scientists did the revision before first answering the question. This led to the scientific advice including two separate MPs with two separate sets of 2026-28 TACs, complicating Commission negotiations. Second, an MP should be implemented fully or it jeopardizes the expected performance and ability to achieve management objectives. The sanctioned 20% western overage was chosen as the highest level that can be taken in the western area without triggering an exceptional circumstance. However, prior MSE testing found that a 20% overage would cause the MP to fail to achieve the Safety management objective, resulting in a higher than agreed upon risk of breaching the limit reference point. Thankfully, there is an MP review scheduled for the next few years that provides an opportunity to get back on course with a bluefin MP that is likely to achieve Commission objectives.

The other disappointment was the inability to pass the European Union’s proposal to adopt management objectives for North and South Atlantic blue sharks. Nevertheless, there was support for the two stocks’ MSEs to start in 2026, building on progress to date, including that made at the Global Blue Shark MSE workshop that we co-hosted last month.

As the gavel drops on this year’s annual meeting, ICCAT has a lot to be proud of, with MPs adopted for 5 of its key stocks and MSEs in process for 6 additional stocks. But MPs are not just paper rules. It’s critical to not only adopt them, but also to fully implement them. To not just set the rules but to continue to stick to them, whether the MP calls for increasing or decreasing fishing. It is notable that this was the first year that an ICCAT MP called for a TAC decrease, and ICCAT didn’t implement it. As ICCAT continues to modernize and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its management through the MP approach, members need to recommit to preventing politics and short-term catch desires from infiltrating and compromising the MSE-based MP process.