Balfegó launches bluefin tuna campaign with 4,045-ton quota, 13 vessels

For recreational tuna anglers, Balfegó’s 4,045-ton bluefin quota mattered far beyond company accounting. It signaled how much fishing pressure would hit the stock, how tightly the season would be paced, and how much room the fishery had to keep bluefin abundant enough for a sustainable harvest.

Balfegó launched its annual bluefin campaign on May 19 and said it would run until July 1. The operation mobilized 13 purse-seine vessels and 26 auxiliary boats, including the company’s own Frau II and Tio Gel Segon, and the company said the campaign would generate more than 350 direct jobs. Balfegó said the quota came from commercial agreements with Spanish, French and Italian vessels that supply the company, a reminder that this is a tightly coordinated industrial fishery, not a free-for-all on the water.

The company also leaned on its long history in the fishery. Balfegó said it has been involved in bluefin tuna fishing since the 1980s and describes itself as a world leader in the capture, feeding, study and commercialization of bluefin tuna. The scale of this year’s plan also marked a step up from 2024, when Balfegó began on May 26 with a 3,087-ton quota, filled that allocation in 12 days of effective fishing and returned to port on June 13.

That larger allowance sat within a broader management reset from the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. In 2025, ICCAT approved total allowable catches of 48,403 tons for eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna for 2026-2028, up 19.3 percent, and 3,081.6 tons for western Atlantic bluefin, up 13 percent. ICCAT also said the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean stock no longer appeared to need the emergency measures used under the earlier recovery plan, a notable sign of improvement for a species that spent years under hard restraint.

Spain moved its own rules with the new ICCAT numbers, updating the national bluefin fleet allowance to 7,938.81 tons through 2028. For the bluefin crowd, that is the real story behind Balfegó’s 4,045 tons: access is wider than it was a few seasons ago, but the fishery still depends on discipline, timing and a stock healthy enough to keep the bite coming.