A new report released by the Blue Marine Foundation and Kroll, and shared with The Associated Press in advance reveals the extent of the European fleet’s access to Indian Ocean tuna stocks, finding that European companies have taken a third of the tropical tuna catch at a time when yellowfin and bigeye tuna are under pressure and still rebounding from being severely overfished.
The European Union has held a dominant position among Indian Ocean tuna fleets since the 1980s, despite the ocean’s distance from Europe. At times, vessels flying Spanish or French flags accounted for nearly 40 per cent of the catch of the region’s three key tropical tuna species: skipjack, yellowfin and bigeye.
As more coastal states began to exert their right to exploit this natural resource on their doorstep in the 1990s, the percentage of catch caught by EU-flagged vessels began to slip, and in the 2020s it sits between 16-21 per cent.
“Europe’s opportunity to help stop overfishing is greater than first appears,” said Benedict Hamilton, a Managing Director at Kroll as quoted in The Associated Press article.
“At first glance it looks like Europe’s industrial tuna fleets have been reducing in the Indian Ocean. In fact, if you unpick the complicated web of ownership it becomes clear that ships that appear to be locally owned in coastal states are in fact ultimately owned by a small number of companies in Europe.”
First published by the Blue Marine Foundation on May 7, 2026. Read the full report here.
