Despite being an important source of wealth and food security for many countries, most of the small tuna stocks in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea remain unassessed. In this study, we summarized the current state of knowledge of this group of species reviewing the information available on life history parameters, stock structure, historical catches, size frequency distributions and current knowledge of stock status. In relation to the life history parameters, data are overall scarce and mainly missing in the Eastern Atlantic where small tunas are relevant in small-scale fisheries. From the 27 defined stocks, only 11 have been quantitatively assessed. From those, the Northwest wahoo and the Southeast little tunny stocks may be experiencing overfishing, deserving priority management attention. Length-based rather than catch-based methods showed a more promising applicability for small tunas, although representative length distributions from the catch are scarce for some stocks. Historical catch time series for small tuna are still incomplete, however, the last two decades are the most accurate and could be considered in future assessment methods. The gaps of knowledge related mainly to life history parameters and historical catches are the main reason why most of these stocks remain unassessed and unmanaged.

尽管是许多国家财富和粮食安全的重要来源，但大西洋和地中海的大部分小型金枪鱼种群仍未得到评估。在这项研究中，我们总结了这组物种的当前知识状态，回顾了有关生活史参数、种群结构、历史捕获量、大小频率分布和当前种群状况知识的可用信息。关于生活史参数，数据总体稀缺，主要在东大西洋缺失，那里的小金枪鱼与小规模渔业有关。在 27 种确定的库存中，只有 11 种进行了定量评估。其中，西北瓦胡和东南小金枪鱼可能正在经历过度捕捞，值得优先管理关注。基于长度而非基于渔获量的方法显示出对小型金枪鱼更有希望的适用性，尽管某些种群的渔获量的代表性长度分布很少。小金枪鱼的历史捕捞时间序列仍不完整，但最近 20 年是最准确的，可以在未来的评估方法中加以考虑。主要与生活史参数和历史捕捞量相关的知识差距是大多数这些种群仍未评估和管理的主要原因。