Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) is an inter-government organisation responsible for the management of tuna and tuna-like species in the Indian Ocean. Its headquarters is located in Victoria, Seychelles. 

The main stocks being exploited by large-scale on the high seas and in the EEZ of Seychelles:

- Bigeye Tuna (Thunnus obesus) which is being considered as threatened world wide by IUCN.

- Skipjack Tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis) 

- Yellowfin Tuna (Thunnus albacares) considered as Near Threatened worldwide by the IUCN.

- Southern Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) - considered as Critically Endangered

After fishing all these, they are brought to the factory and are cleaned, froze, boiled and canned. They are then exported to other parts of the world in huge containers.

I greatly feel that they are fishing too many! 

More can be learnt about their stock summary click here

And the by-catch - such as the critically endangered sharks & turtles- which needs to be noted that these amazing creatures are sometimes caught on purpose without IOTC knowing and are not recorded by the boat.

IOTC does not allow these kinds of action to take place on the vessels - they are not in favour. But how can they control them when they are on sea - "what happens on the boat, stays on the boat"

IOTC makes sure that the batch they get from each vessels are recorded correctly and traced through out all the processes until they are canned! SYAH Seychelles gave me the chance to visit IOTC factory in the Seychelles and was able to experience how the system works from the buying of the fish from the vessels until the very end - where they are canned and packed in the trays and boxes - put in the containers. 

Though it seemed awesome with all the machines and workers (IOTC and Seybrew are basically the only two major factories in the Seychelles) I felt kind of sad and to me it felt like cruelty. 

Taking all these fish from their homes - oceans and putting them in cans - exporting them for money. It all seems so wrong to me. 

Long time ago, we are depended ONLY on local fishermen practicing safe fishing techniques the amount they fished was enough for all of us to live with - enough to eat. The fishermen benefited because all their fish was sold and none was thrown away like they do now. People have canned tunas and frozen fish sold in shops and they do not buy the fresh fish from fishermen because the fishermen are greatly dependent on their sale, they tend to raise the price, so that the little they sell would be enough to cover their daily cost - but obviously with the increase in price of the fish, local people will switch into buying the cheaper frozen ones and thus no sale is made by the fishermen which now worsens the situation.

The advantage of exporting the canned tunas goes to the Seychelles itself higher income for the country and tends to help with our trade deficit and it also becomes an advantage for the landlock countries because they do not have the facilities to go fishing like Seychellois do, they do not have contact with the ocean!!

This report was just to open my mind to all the wonderful and hardworking ambassadors. I've read most of your articles and I love what you are doing, its great to have people like all of you in the world!