Three signals are converging in the global tuna market:
🔻 Eastern Pacific skipjack catches: -30.9% YoY
💰 Bangkok frozen skipjack: $2,100/t
🌊 El Niño: strengthening rapidly
Taken separately, each matters. Taken together, they deserve attention.
🎣 The catch picture is changing
Preliminary IATTC data for the Eastern Pacific through 2 August 2026 show retained purse-seine catches at 557,313 tonnes, versus 666,156 tonnes over the equivalent reporting period in 2025.
But the headline number hides a much more important species split:
🔴 Skipjack: 314,980 → 217,807 t | -30.9%
🔴 Bigeye: 35,843 → 16,330 t | -54.4%
🟢 Yellowfin: 305,284 → 314,230 t | +2.9%
The pressure is therefore not uniform across the tuna complex.
For canners heavily exposed to skipjack, that distinction matters.
💰 Bangkok is already sending a price signal
Frozen skipjack for canning reached approximately $2,100/t in Bangkok on September 10, compared with around $1,850/t in mid-August.
That is roughly:
➡️ +$250/t in a matter of weeks
➡️ A return above the $2,000/t threshold
➡️ The highest reported benchmark in more than three years
The market is therefore facing tighter supply before we even know how persistent the current catch weakness will be.
🌊 And now El Niño enters the equation
NOAA says El Niño is strengthening and assigns a greater than 90% probability of a very strong event during the Northern Hemisphere fall and winter of 2026-27.
For October-December, NOAA currently gives a 75% probability of an event strong enough to exceed previous El Niño episodes dating back to 1950 under its RONI measure.
⚠️ That does not mean El Niño caused the current decline in tuna catches.
Nor does it allow us to predict precisely how tuna availability will evolve.
🎯 What should tuna players be watching?
🏭 For processors, the question is how much raw-material coverage is already secured — and at what cost.
🚛 For traders, origin diversification and the speed of any catch recovery become increasingly relevant.
🎣 For fleets, changes in distribution and catch performance can quickly translate into very different economics.
🛒 For brands and retailers, the key question comes later: how much cost pressure can be absorbed before it reaches finished-product pricing?
And across the whole chain, one metric may become more important than price itself: AVAILABILITY.
The next few months will show whether this is a temporary tightening — or the beginning of a more difficult raw-material cycle for the canned tuna industry.