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Fishermen in the Maldives remember when they plied their trade within sight of land. Casting off at dawn, they’d work just a few kilometers offshore. Many would return to the islands by noon, their holds full of freshly hooked yellowfin and skipjack tuna, says Adam Ziyad, the Maldives’ director general of fisheries. That all changed in the mid-2010s.

The widespread adoption of a technology called a drifting fish aggregating device (dFAD) beginning in the 1990s and 2000s, enabled predominantly European purse seine fishermen to start catching hundreds of tuna at a time. Indian Ocean yellowfin tuna was officially declared overfished by 2015, leaving artisanal fishermen from Kenya, the Maldives, and Madagascar complaining of dwindling catches. Catches among EU purse seiners, meanwhile, have only risen, up from 10,400 tonnes in 1983 to 75,919 tonnes in 2021.

Fish aggregating devices play off the fact that, like moths to a flame, many animals that inhabit the vast expanses of the open ocean are attracted to shelter, breed, or hunt under any kind of structure they can find—whether logs, rafts of plastic, or in the case of a dFAD, a tube of netting suspended from a raft. Tuna swarm the devices, then get scooped up in vast quantities. Conservationists and coastal nations blame the widespread use of dFADs—particularly by European fishermen—for destabilizing Indian Ocean tuna populations. In particular, because previous research suggests dFADs disproportionately attract juvenile tuna, and because fish caught as juveniles never get a chance to breed, detractors say the devices pose an existential threat to the entire Indian Ocean tuna fishery.

That’s why in February, when the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), an intergovernmental body that adjudicates most fishing disputes in the region, pushed through new regulations that would restrict the use of dFADs in Indian Ocean tuna fisheries starting in January 2024, the move was heralded as a win by conservationists and the representatives of coastal states from around the region.

But now, just a few months later, the agreement is teetering, with just shy of one-third of IOTC delegations withdrawing their support.

To understand why such a praised agreement seems to be imploding, it helps to look back on how it came to be.

IOTC meetings are typically mundane affairs, explains Ziyad: a nation will table a motion, then hash out amendments with other countries until the motion is adopted by all member states through consensus. The agreement to impose a 72-day annual restriction on dFADs, however, had a more storied birth. In February, the Kenyan delegation to the IOTC proposed, then abruptly withdrew, the motion. Rumors swirled that the European Union—which catches one-third of all the tuna fished in the Indian Ocean—swayed Kenya’s decision by threatening to withdraw funding for a US $24-million aid deal.

The delegations from coastal states including Indonesia, Madagascar, and Pakistan, who supported the dFAD closure, were incensed by Kenya’s sudden about-face. “We even discussed boycotting the meeting in that session,” recalls Ziyad, who as vice chair of the IOTC meeting spoke against this drastic step.

Faced with stubborn resistance, particularly from the European Union, delegates from several coastal states forewent the organization’s usual consensus-based approach and instead put the issue to a vote, which they handily won.

Behind the scenes, however, this new deal was already disintegrating.

IOTC agreements are not binding, and member states can simply choose to opt out of any measure passed by the forum, which the European Union promptly did. But if one-third of IOTC member states object to a motion, then the agreement doesn’t hold for anyone.

So far, seven other countries have objected to February’s resolution—often for reasons that loop back to the European Union, suggests Frédéric Le Manach, the scientific director for the Bloom Association, an NGO and conservation think tank. Both Seychelles and Mauritius, for instance, have preferential trade deals with the European Union for tuna canned in their factories.

If at least three more countries flip sides, then according to the IOTC charter the plan to restrict dFADs ceases to apply. “We suspect that might happen,” says Ziyad.

In IOTC meetings, the EU delegation has argued that there’s simply not enough evidence to suggest a dFAD closure would help restore yellowfin tuna stocks, says Ziyad. But that lack of evidence, proponents of the dFAD plan say, is because it hasn’t been attempted yet. And as Ziyad told The Guardian when the agreement was first passed, “The IOTC is the only tuna [regional fisheries management organization] without a closure policy.”

Should February’s motion be nullified, says Le Manach, the ecological consequences for Indian Ocean fisheries would be profound. Leaving aside the disproportionately high number of juvenile yellowfin tuna caught using dFADs, he says, the devices also spur by-catch rates that are worryingly high. EU vessels catch almost 250,000 tonnes of tuna in the Indian Ocean per year, says Le Manach. With such a high by-catch rate, he adds, “it’s a lot of sharks and turtles.”

A spokesperson for the EU Commission says the European Union is not leveraging its aid agreements with Kenya and other nations to safeguard its tuna catch. While the European Union’s preference is to see a gradual reduction in the number of dFADs in use in the Indian Ocean, it “is not against the adoption of a dFAD closure,” says the spokesperson, “provided that such a measure is implemented in a correct manner taking into account scientific advice on its impact and modalities.” Neither condition is present in the February resolution, they continue, with the European Union fearing that catches on yellowfin and bigeye tuna would not be reduced but instead concentrated over smaller stretches of time. Only by making future dFAD closures contingent on advice from the IOTC Scientific Committee could the IOTC as a whole make an informed decision on the matter, they say.

But Le Manach and others aren’t done fighting to revive the original agreement. During an IOTC meeting this month, the Bloom Association announced that it would be mounting a legal challenge against the European Union’s objection to the dFAD measure, arguing that its position contradicts the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy.

Meanwhile, discussions within the IOTC remain at an impasse. But the chances of keeping the agreement alive seem to be dwindling. The European Union and its allies have until August 22 to convince just two more members to nullify the motion after Tanzania swapped sides last week.