yellowfin

Tuna are awesome. We don’t get to say that enough, so since it’s World Tuna Day, I want to make amends. These fish are majestic ocean wanderers, who have earned their place in history, but today they are sadly the icons of global overfishing & dodgy fishing methods, and a globally-traded commodity.

Tuna are fish, and they are wild animals. But to many people, they are simply understood as food. It can be a bit confusing when the short hand of ‘tuna’ is used, as it covers a whole family of species, from the relatively-tiddly and widespread skipjack, right up to the majestic but beleaguered bluefins.

Update, December 2009: John West introduces new sustainability policy »

Last year we published our tinned tuna league table, ranking the main retailers and brands on the overall sustainability of their canned tuna. Tinned tuna, which is normally skipjack (the most common variety), is a food cupboard staple in the UK, and we are the second biggest consumers in the world, so we can have a massive impact on improving the sustainability of the fishing that fills the tins.

As well as assessing the information given on the tins (some didn’t even tell you what species was inside!) we also evaluated the impact of how the fish were being caught, and the company's overall sourcing policies.

Update on tinned tuna, June 2009: how have the retailers have responded to our report?

We already know that John West's website contains plenty of corporate puffery. After all, this is the company that claims to "only purchase fish which is caught with no harm to the marine environment" but which came a dismal last in our sustainability league table of tinned tuna brands. Yes, John West truly is John Worst on tinned tuna.

Tinned tuna is big business - there's a can in almost everyone's cupboard. Here in the UK we can't get enough of it - we're the second biggest consumer in the world after the USA. Globally tuna exports are worth more than any other fish species, at around 2.7 billion dollars per year.

But there are big problems with the way tuna is caught. Our new briefing paper, Tinned Tuna's Hidden Catch, explains how large numbers of sea turtles, sharks and other fish are all being wiped out by the global tuna industry. And tuna is in trouble itself, with some species critically endangered by overfishing.