Bangkok prices for frozen whole round skipjack are around USD 1,650/mt, up USD100/mt from March prices.

Canners have been bidding higher for Western Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) tuna, resulting in a bullish mood with better than 6 percent increase over the past month.

How will your country celebrate World Tuna Day?

There are ideas and plans coming together in the Marshall Islands for World Tuna Day, including poke recipe and tuna filleting competitions. For students there will be song, poetry, poster, drama and video opportunities. World Tuna Day corresponds nicely with the RMI Constitution Day and so don't be surprised to see tuna featured in their parade and festival booth.

It would be great to find out what other countries are doing on May 2nd to celebrate "Smart Tuna - Smart Ocean." PNA looks for World Tuna Day 2018 to be big and look for your creative ideas and pictures to help spread the word - globally. Please send them to  worldtunaday@pnatuna.com.

South Korea's seafood exports jumped 16.4 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier on strong demand for tuna and dried laver, the fisheries ministry said Monday.

Outbound shipments of seafood products came to US$560 million in the January-March period, rising for the ninth consecutive quarter, the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries said. The amount was a record high for the first quarter.

Seafood exports to Japan, South Korea's biggest market, advanced 4.3 percent on-year to $163 million, led by sales of tuna, spanish mackerel and oysters, and those to China increased 13.6 percent to $86 million thanks to strong demand for crab and tuna.

By product, tuna, the top export item, soared 28.4 percent to $155 million, as sale of frozen products skyrocketed in such countries as the Philippines, Ecuador, China and Mexico.

Exports of dried laver, called "gim" in Korean, came to $123 million in the first three months, a surge of 14.2 percent from a year earlier.

President Donald Trump has until April 16th to either follow his Interior secretary's recommendations to relax fishing restrictions in marine monuments key for American Samoa and Atlantic coast fishermen or let a court challenge to the monuments proceed.

A federal court has agreed to allow Atlantic fishermen and lobstermen to proceed with a lawsuit that seeks to reverse Obama-era protections for the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument off the New England coast.

But the case could have a direct bearing on when or how American Samoa's tuna industry gets relief from fishing restrictions in the Pacific Remote Islands and Rose Atoll marine monuments.

When the Pla Lung 1 fishing boat glided out of a port in eastern Thailand in late February, it was loaded with symbolism.  Thai Union Group, the world's largest canned tuna supplier, had spruced up the vessel to show it was serious about better working conditions following a "yellow card" warning issued by the European Union in 2015.

The overhaul was a stark reminder to emerging markets companies that the price of operating in advanced Western markets is compliance with international safety and environmental standards. The EU had determined in 2015 that the Thai fish industry was failing to combat Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Three years on, the voyage of the Pla Lung 1 amounted to a declaration of intent: a chastened Thai Union was ready to embark on a new phase of growth in Asia, especially China, where consumers are switching to high-end seafood.

Minister of  Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and the Environment Isabel García Tejerina states that the allocation of the bluefin tuna quota for the 2018 season has been based on historical, technical and characterization criteria of the vessel as well as employment, taking also into account the environmental and socio-economic aspects of community regulations.

In her speech at the Senate Plenary, the minister recalled yesterday that the fishing authorization for bluefin tuna for the Canary Islands was established in a Resolution published in the BOE last March, which set the conditions for fishing for 243 authorized vessels in the insular environment.

She also pointed out that as part of the processing of this Resolution it was proposed to set a limitation per vessel of the fishing possibilities, which would allow efficient planning of the individual activity of each vessel or of the groups of vessels that decided to manage in a shared way the 255 tonnes of the quota assigned to the Canarian fleet in 2018 in order to avoid occasional oversupply. However, given the absence of a broad consensus, the same mechanism of previous years of joint fishing for the entire fleet was finally maintained in a transitory manner.