diff --git a/libvips/foreign/tiff2vips.c b/libvips/foreign/tiff2vips.c
index 8804042b..5b8b2c97 100644
--- a/libvips/foreign/tiff2vips.c
+++ b/libvips/foreign/tiff2vips.c
@@ -1630,6 +1630,11 @@ rtiff_fill_region( VipsRegion *out,
 
 	VIPS_GATE_STOP( "rtiff_fill_region: work" ); 
 
+	/* We can't shut down the input file early for tile read, even if we
+	 * know load is in sequential mode, since we are not inside a
+	 * vips_sequential() and requests are not guarateed to be in order.
+	 */
+
 	return( 0 );
 }