NGO urges Japanese businesses to push for North Atlantic mackerel sharing agreement
By Chris Loew • Published: November 17, 2025
The North Atlantic Pelagic Advocacy Group (NAPA) is asking Japanese seafood companies to add their voices to its calls for a comprehensive management plan for the North East Atlantic mackerel fishery to end the current overfishing.
The coastal countries surrounding the North Atlantic—Norway, the EU, the UK, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland—have for several years been unable to agree on a comprehensive management plan, leading them to set their own national quotas.
In December of 2022 they set a deadline of March 31, 2023 to reach a quota-sharing deal, but the deadline passed with no agreement reached. On October 25, 2024 they agreed on the total allowable catch (TAC) for 2025 of 576,958 metric tons (MT), but have still not finalized a comprehensive sharing agreement on how to divide the TAC.
In the meantime, each country sets its own limit, and the sum of these quotas exceeds the scientific recommendations, such as the 2025 updated assessment from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). This assessment indicated that the biomass of North East Atlantic mackerel had fallen below what is considered to be the lowest safe limit to recover to sustainable levels and advised that the catch limit should be decreased by 70% from the previous year.
The deadlock is nothing new—while some agreements were reached in the early 2000s, they didn’t include robust, lasting mechanisms for quota-sharing across all states (including the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland) in such a way that the sum of all quotas aligned with scientific advice and that each party’s share was fixed and adhered to. The Marine Stewardship Council suspended certifications for mackerel in 2019 and for herring and whiting as of 2020, due to management concerns.
NAPA is a London-based collective of retailers and supply-chain businesses with a commitment to sourcing sustainable seafood. It was launched in 2020 in response to the continuing dispute among coastal states over mackerel quota allocation in the North East Atlantic. Its Independent Chair, Aoife Martin, was formerly the director of operations at Seafish.
It said in a November 10 press release that during the last 15 years, the total annual catch of North East Atlantic mackerel has been on average 40% more than scientific recommendations. To push for an agreement, NAPA is coordinating two fishery improvement projects (FIPs)—one that covers both mackerel and Atlanto-Scandian herring, and another for blue whiting (through the Marin Trust’s Improver Programme).
The FIPs are meant to drive political will for sustainable management, while holding key actors and decision-makers to account. Both are unique in that they are “policy FIPs” – focusing on advocacy aimed at decision-makers, rather than on changing fishing practices on the water.
Many NAPA member companies have pledged to reduce sourcing mackerel from the region if no mackerel quota-sharing agreement is reached by April 2026. Now, NAPA is asking Japanese companies—major importers of mackerel from the region—to get behind the push.
NAPA asserts that a decline in Japan’s domestic mackerel catch due to overfishing, as well as changed migration routes associated with climate change, have made the country more dependent on imports from the North Atlantic, and that this resource is now also in danger.
“Japan has known the pain of losing a well-loved fish from its table,” NAPA’s Martin said. “Japanese businesses now have an opportunity to inspire Coastal States to learn from their experience, and can lead the way to ensure the same crisis isn’t repeated in the North East Atlantic. NAPA is encouraging all Japanese businesses with a stake in the future of North East Atlantic mackerel to add their voices to our calls for change and demonstrate just how much is at risk if European decision makers fail to ensure stocks are protected.”
Japan’s catch of blue and chub mackerel have declined sharply from highs in the 1970s and ‘80s according to the country’s stock assessments submitted to the North Pacific Fisheries Commission (NFPC).
However, domestic supply challenges alone don’t fully explain Japan’s increasing imports. The high fat content, reliable size grading, and predictable freezing quality of North East Atlantic mackerel have also become decisive factors driving import preferences. The fat percentage of Norwegian autumn mackerel (Scomber scombrus) is consistently 20–30%, while that of Japan’s domestic chub mackerel (Scomber japonicus, Japanese: gomasaba) is 8–20%, and that of blue mackerel (Scomber australasicus, Japanese: masaba) is 5–12%.
The domestic mackerel also varies widely in fattiness and size by year and season. As a result, Japan exports much of its own catch to less-developed countries and imports the premium Norwegian product for its own consumption.
According to the Norwegian Seafood Council, Japan is by far Norway’s most important mackerel market. Japanese mackerel consumption was estimated at 260,000 MT in 2024, with Norway accounting for around 50 percent of this (when including amounts processed in third countries and re-exported to Japan). Thus, they have a strong position to encourage a sustainable outcome.
Supplementary data (PDF translation): Japan mackerel import quota holders and import volumes (FY 2023, METI)