Wild Tuna and Welfare in Fisheries

Tuna are among the most commercially valuable fish globally, but their welfare during capture — including longline hooks, purse seining, and live baiting — is almost entirely unregulated.

Key Facts

Tuna are among the most active, wide-ranging fish in the ocean — capable of maintaining body temperatures above ambient
Bluefin tuna can reach 3 meters in length and are apex predators with complex predatory behavior
Longline capture involves fish remaining hooked for hours with exhaustion and suffocation stress
Purse seine capture crowds thousands of fish in nets that progressively tighten, causing crushing and suffocation
Pole and line fishing causes less cumulative stress and is the basis of some welfare-conscious certifications
The Marine Stewardship Council addresses sustainability but not individual fish welfare in its certification standards

Welfare Considerations

Tuna welfare in commercial fisheries receives essentially no attention despite these fish being among the most physiologically sophisticated teleosts. The prolonged suffering of tuna on longline hooks — fighting against restraint for hours, exhausted, unable to ventilate their gills adequately — represents a welfare cost that scale makes enormous. Purse seining creates mass crowding and crushing that individual fish survive or die from in chaotic, unmonitored conditions. The welfare framework for wild-caught fish is essentially non-existent. Developing and applying fish welfare considerations to major commercial fisheries is one of the most significant unmet challenges in global animal welfare.

What You Can Do

Choose pole-and-line caught tuna where available as a lower-welfare-cost alternative
Support development of welfare considerations in fisheries certification schemes
Advocate for observer programs on tuna vessels that include welfare condition monitoring
Reduce tuna consumption given the absence of welfare standards in most capture methods
Support research into tuna welfare indicators and humane capture methods