Late yesterday, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) published its Nature’s Redlist of Threatened Species (full report here). In that report, the authors claimed that a majority of the world’s tuna stocks are declining and now qualify as “threatened” or “near-threatened.” Included in that list are three species contained in canned tuna, yellowfin, bigeye and albacore.The report has subsequently been picked up by media outlets around the world.

While threatened or near-threatenedsoundsscary, the folks at the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation see things a little differently. There, Victor Restrepo and Bill Fox laid out the case forwhy the IUCN definitions aren’t necessarily as alarmingas they might first sound.

“While there are positive aspects to using a consistent formula, when IUCN lists a fish as ‘Threatened,’ it does not necessarily mean that the species is in real and immediate danger of extinction or collapse,” wrote Restrepo and Fox. “It just means that there has been a drop in the population size that meets the formula used in IUCN classifications. Very often, these IUCN classifications are at odds with what is considered to be successful fisheries management to ensure sustainable seafood production.” That sounds like the sort of nuance that normally never makes it into the newspaper, and there’s a whole lot more where that came from. Read it all here.