Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP), Global Fishing Watch (GFW), and the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) have joined forces to improve transparency in global tuna fisheries. With support from the Walmart Foundation, the collaboration aims to give seafood buyers a clearer view of the environmental impact and compliance of their tuna supply chains.
The initiative will combine data from SFP’s FishSource and Seafood Metrics platforms with ISSF’s Proactive Vessel Viewer and Marine Manager. Together, these resources will provide sustainability indicators that go beyond stock health and management practices, helping buyers make more responsible sourcing decisions.
“We aren’t reinventing the wheel,” said Kathryn Novak, biodiversity and nature director at SFP. “We’re making it easier for tuna buyers to utilize all the valuable, existing data and resources by putting them together on a platform they’re already familiar with and connecting it with their sourcing. By combining existing resources, we can equip buyers with the information they need to make more informed decisions.”
According to the organizations, transparency remains one of the greatest challenges in global tuna management. In many longline fisheries, observer coverage falls below the required five percent, leaving gaps in vessel-level data related to bycatch mitigation and illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The new collaboration aims to close these knowledge gaps through open data sharing and enhanced vessel-level monitoring.
“Verified transparency is the cornerstone of credible, science-based sustainability,” said Susan Jackson, President of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF). “By contributing vessel-level insights to this collaboration, we’re helping to close information gaps that have long challenged stakeholders seeking to evaluate seafood sustainability.
The effort will also help buyers identify proactive vessels reporting sustainable practices and compliance with international regulations. By providing this vessel-level visibility, stakeholders can better target risk mitigation, design evidence-based policies, and promote responsible fisheries management that protects both marine biodiversity and the livelihoods that depend on it.
“By integrating key data sources into a platform already familiar with industry, we’re helping build a broader and more inclusive understanding of vessel-level activity,” said Charles Kilgour, director of program initiatives at GFW . “This enables industry to better target risk mitigation efforts and strengthens accountability and cooperation between government and industry, in a way that is driving a shift to more sustainable and transparent policies."
Through new partnerships, the organizations aim to drive a global shift toward more transparent and sustainable tuna fisheries, ensuring that both ecosystems and fishing communities benefit from a stronger foundation of shared data and accountability.
