The deal that collapsed in Nagasaki in July has been rescued in an online meeting, and Pacific bluefin tuna quotas are going up.
Negotiators for the nations that fish the stock agreed on 18 August to raise the catch limit for larger fish in the Western and Central Pacific from 11,869 tonnes to 14,836 tonnes, an increase of roughly 25%. The quota for smaller fish, the year classes that determine what the stock looks like a decade from now, drops from 5,125 tonnes to 4,823 tonnes, a cut of about 6%. Kyodo News reported the talks were held behind closed doors and were an unusual resumption of a meeting that had already failed.
What failed it in July was Mexico. The joint working group of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission met in Nagasaki from 8 to 11 July intending to finalise a long-term harvest strategy, and broke up with nothing. Mexican negotiators objected late, according to sources involved in the talks, out of concern that Japan and other Western and Central Pacific fishing nations would land more fish than the numbers implied.
Japan spent the following five weeks changing Mexico's mind.
"Given the outcome of the previous meeting in Nagasaki, I would like to very much welcome the fact that Mexico agreed (to new catch quotas) and we reached a consensus, even though there is more to negotiate," farm minister Norikazu Suzuki said at a press conference after the meeting.
Takumi Fukuda, the senior Fisheries Agency official who represented Japan at the talks, was blunter about how settled it is.
"We're still in a situation where we cannot let our guard down," Fukuda told reporters. "We intend to remain vigilant and respond accordingly."
Pacific bluefin is the fish that overfishing nearly finished. The stock crashed, then clawed its way back under a decade of unusually strict international rules, and that recovery is the entire basis of the argument for taking more of it now. It is also the basis of the argument against.
Dave Gershman, who leads The Pew Charitable Trusts' conservation work with Pacific regional fisheries bodies, watched the July collapse and did not read it as a scheduling problem.
"For much of the last decade, Pacific bluefin management showed that when governments work together, they can bring a severely overfished species back from the brink of collapse," Gershman said. "But at a joint management meeting in Nagasaki, Japan, governments disregarded a tentative agreement they made in March to adopt a much-needed management procedure for the species at this convening."
That procedure, known as the Newport Beach Management Procedure, would have set quotas automatically against measured stock levels rather than leaving them to be haggled over each year. It had preliminary agreement before the meeting. It fell apart when Japan, Mexico and the United States each argued for a larger share of the impact ratio between the eastern and western Pacific. What survived instead was the quota rise.
"The governments, which represent Pacific bluefin tuna fishing nations at the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, have allowed short-term economic interests and quota increases to take precedence over the long-term health and recovery of the fishery," Gershman said, noting the failure leaves Pacific bluefin as the only bluefin fishery without a modernised precautionary management system.
The Pacific is not alone in loosening. NOAA Fisheries confirmed on 18 August that it is implementing increased Atlantic bluefin quotas won by the US delegation at the 2025 ICCAT meeting, lifting the baseline annual quota from 1,316.14 to 1,509.58 metric tonnes and the pelagic longline bycatch set-aside from 25 to 62.5 tonnes, a combined rise of 17%. The agency also raised 2026 quotas for North and South Atlantic swordfish and North Atlantic albacore to account for underharvests, framing the package as more access and more flexibility for US fishermen.
Two oceans, two negotiating rooms, the same direction of travel. The Pacific agreement is expected to be ratified at both commissions' annual meetings this year and take effect in 2027.