Malta Denies Responsibility For Bluefin Over-Fishingff

Malta’s Parliamentary Secretary Frans Agius has defended Malta’s tarnished image in a WWF report on the exploitation of bluefin resources in the Mediterranean Sea, warning of the collapse of these tuna stocks.

“Malta… is definitely not the culprit for the situation,” Agius said on the report presented to the European Parliament’s fisheries committee which pinpointed Malta as a “magnet” for tuna ranching operators shifting to the last breeding grounds for bluefin tuna in Libyan waters.

A spokesperson for the WWF Mediterranean Program said the Libyan origin of most of the tuna caged in Malta raised “serious doubts” over the legality of the catches, which are believed to be in excess of 60 per cent of the quotas allocated by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).

Agius said that warnings of a collapse in tuna stocks “may be a little exaggerated”, although he concedes it is “definitely time to take proper stock of the situation… All the time we are told that the stocks are collapsing and yet every year these reports continue quoting that catches are always higher than the officially reported ones,” Agius said.

The WWF has warned of an increasing amount of unreported tuna catches being shipped out of the Mediterranean to Japan, the largest importer of the prized tuna belly meat which forms part of the sushi delicacy.

Between 2004 and January 2006, Japan imported a total of Lm40 million in tuna originating from Malta.

While French and Libyan fleets were singled out as the main culprits for most illegal, unregulated and undeclared (IUU) fishing, the WWF said a Korean-Maltese-Libyan “Tuna Hotel” venture inside Libya’s fisheries zone last year accounted for 1,750 tons of tuna being transferred live to cages, slaughtered and processed at sea. A further 910 tons were purse-seined and slaughtered at sea by Libyan vessels. These catches remain unreported to ICCAT.

Agius also defended Malta from accusations that purse seine fishing in Libyan waters has benefited from illegal tuna-spotting flights in June, some of them being operated from Malta and Lampedusa.

“Malta is also one of the few states that have specific legislation relating to flights linked with tuna spotting operations. In the past reports of WWF this accusation was meted out to us as well, but investigations have shown that most of the accusations were unfounded. No flights for tuna spotting originated from our airport during the month of June. Tuna spotting flights were organized from Malta Airport during May when they are allowed. During the month of June some of the foreign light aircraft indicated as involved in the tuna spotting operations had a refueling stopover but never registered their flight plan as forming part of tuna spotting operations.”

Agius said Malta’s ports were used by more vessels for the transhipment of tuna, and said Maltese fisheries authorities were crucial to the determination of over-fishing. “A great amount of data that is used to calculate over-fishing or transhipments on the high seas also arise from the insistence of the Maltese fisheries department to be present at each trans-shipment and on presenting papers with the most exact descriptions and weights that can be attained in the current work practices.”