Purse seine vessels account for about 66% of the world’s tuna catch. However, the number of purse seiners operating in the various oceans is not available from a single source. In this paper we estimate the number and fishing capacity of authorized tuna purse seiners based primarily on information available from the five tuna Regional Fishery Management Organizations (RFMOs).
After accounting for possible duplicate entries, we calculate that as of August 2026 there are at least 2,148 purse seiners fishing for tunas worldwide. This is surely an underestimate because many small-scale purse seiners or purse seiners operating in only one EEZ do not have to be listed on RFMO records of authorized fishing vessels, our primary source of data.
Focusing on large-scale purse seiners (defined here as having 335 m3 fish hold volume or greater) that target tropical tunas (skipjack, yellowfin and bigeye), we calculate there are 693 such vessels with a combined fishing capacity of approximately 895,000 m3. Both the number of these vessels and their combined capacity have increased about 3% since last year.
In terms of the proportion of these vessels flagged to developing or emerging economies relative to developed economies, it has been increasing steadily since ISSF started producing these snapshot reports. Of those 693 large scale tropical tuna purse seiners, 505 are registered on the ISSF Pro Active Vessel Register (PVR), which represent 73% in number and 83% in fish hold volume (FHV); and 402 are on ISSF’s Vessels in Other Sustainability Initiatives (VOSI), representing 58% in number and 69% in FHV. About 12% of these 693 large-scale tropical tuna vessels are authorized to fish in more than one RFMO, which should be taken into account in any efforts to manage fishing capacity at a regional level.
Read a press release about this report, and see a related infographic.
Downloads: 4 | Views: 3
