Fiji has become the first Pacific Island nation to join the Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI). Alitia Bainivalu, Fiji’s Fisheries Minister, and Sven Biermann, Executive Director of FiTI, signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at the UN FAO COFI meeting held in Rome last week. Fiji will also collaborate with FiTI to deploy a Fisheries Information System (FIS), under which FiTI will support the Ministry in organising, verifying, and publishing data through its online reporting infrastructure.

The two parties will work together to enhance fisheries transparency in the Fiji’s fisheries, including publishing reliable data on its marine sector, covering foreign fishing agreements, commercial licensing, catch volumes, and local artisanal fishing activities, according to a FiTI statement.  Biermann said: “Fiji is not just a new country that we welcome into the FiTI; it also marks the start of our implementation efforts in the Pacific, one of the most important fisheries regions globally.” FiTI is a global, multi-stakeholder initiative that works with coastal countries to improve transparency in how their marine fisheries are managed.

Israel has launched a National Tuna Project to breed Atlantic bluefin under controlled conditions. The aim is to develop a closed-cycle aquaculture model that supplies eggs and juveniles without depleting wild stocks, according to government statements. In June, fertilized bluefin eggs were flown from Malta to the National Center for Mariculture (NCM) in Eilat, Israel. The juveniles are being reared in the center. Captive breeding is technically demanding and requires tight control of water quality, nutrition, temperature, and sensitive larval stages. If the team can establish a stable broodstock, the initiative could bolster food security, reduce pressure on wild bluefin, and open a new high-value aquaculture niche for Israel.

The project’s aim is to build scientific and production infrastructure domestically. Commercial output remains a longer-term goal, but success would position Israel for premium export channels while generating intellectual property and equipment know-how for wider use. The program draws on research by NCM in Eilat and is backed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, which invested ILS 30 million (USD 9.90 million), alongside the agricultural cooperative Granot Group. In 2019, Atuna reported on Israel funding bluefin farming research, indicating a continuity of effort now shifting from lab research toward pilot-scale production.

A group of critically endangered eagle rays (100-150 individuals) was observed aggregating outside a tuna ranch in Malta, an extremely unusual occurrence. Footage from a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) taken in October 2024 around a tuna ranch off the Northeast coast of Malta in has recorded the largest known gathering to date of this species. A study on their unusual appearance was published in the Marine Biodiversity journal this year.

Researchers said large aggregations of eagle rays are rarely observed. In this case, they highlighted that fresh food used to feed the bluefin had accumulated on the seabed below the cages and the rays were feeding there. Batoid fishes such as rays associating with tuna ranches have been previously documented from the Maltese Islands, the study said.

Picture: ROV footage of eagle rays swimming along the seabed below the tuna cage from which fish are falling.