Whole Foods Brings Innovation to the Tuna Category with the Launch of Pole & Line Tuna

Our products provide customers with unparalleled quality, nutrition, and traceability of the fish to its source. The Pole & Line tuna brand comes to you via fisheries in the north Pacific and the Maldives where fishermen catch tuna using low impact one-by-one fishing methods.

Keeping this long tradition alive off the Pacific Coast of the U.S. are fishermen whose families have fished albacore tuna in these waters for generations, even as the U.S. flagged tuna fishing fleet largely moved to “foreign flags” starting in the 1970s.

Using one-by-one methods albacore fishermen use barbless hooks and poles to catch younger albacore tuna one at a time near the sea’s surface. This approach is distinctly different from the longline fishing employed by other fishing fleets which results in the indiscriminate harvest of other species.

Meanwhile, community fishermen in the Maldives catch skipjack tuna using the low impact pole and line method.