A surge in tuna catches in the Eastern Pacific in 2019 led to lower prices for Ecuadorian catches

According to data recently released by the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), tuna catches in the Eastern Pacific Ocean increased significantly year-on-year in 2019.

Between 1 January and 1 December 2019, tuna caught by purse seine and rod line vessels in the Eastern Pacific increased by 8.9% year-on-year to 618,595 tonnes, according to the IATTC.

Gullermo Moran, director of Tunacons, said the increase was largely driven by increased bonito catches.

Tunacons is made up of 5 large Ecuadorian fishing companies, including Negocios Industriales Real, EuroFish, Grupo Jadran, Servigrup and Tri Marine International. For the past 3 years, Tunacons has been working to reduce by-catch and improve fishing operations to make them more sustainable as part of the Fisheries Improvement Project.

The increase in bonito catch led to a plunge in bonito prices last year.

< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Ecuadorian fishing</h1>

This year, Ecuador accounted for 44 per cent of the catch, or nearly 278,000 tonnes.

Moran said the conservation measures that will be implemented in the eastern Pacific in 2020 were decided three years ago and are not expected to affect this year's catch. He noted that this year's catch will remain stable, but on much the same scale.

Moran said the swordfish, yellowfin tuna and bigeye tuna are not overfished in the eastern Pacific and are doing well.

Ecuador is the largest tuna fishing country in the Americas, followed by Mexico and Panama. It is a major tuna producer in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and the second largest producer of tuna in the world. It catches about 300,000 tonnes of tuna annually and has the largest tuna fishing fleet in the region, 113 purse seine fishing boats and 21 canning plants.

In addition, Ecuador adopted a new national action plan for tuna in December in order to improve the sustainability of its harvest.