Med Tuna Ranches Struggling As EU Halts Fishingff

Mediterranean tuna ranches are feeling the pinch after the European Union moved to prevent the depletion of fish stocks.

”This year, we will probably process only 500 tons,” said Saviour Caruana, a co-owner of Fish and Fish, a bluefin tuna ranch with a capacity of 1,200 tons.

”I had given a deposit of 500,000 euros to one fisherman for his catch this year, but because the EU closed the fishing season earlier he didn’t even catch a single tuna. Some fishermen will go bankrupt, and this is not good for us and the 26 people we employ on the farm,” Caruana said.

Citing fears that quotas were being filled too quickly, the EU called an early end to industrial tuna fishing on June 16, at the peak of this year’s season.

Chronically overfished, Mediterranean tuna are the victims of their success with fish lovers, especially with the growing demand for sushi. About 70 percent of the Mediterranean catch goes to Japan, and prices are rising steadily.

The commission’s decision to close the tuna season early inflamed tensions with the fishing industry because it has been struggling to cope with high fuel prices.

On Monday, the Italian tugboat Cesare Rustico brought 142 tons of bluefin caught off the coast of Libya between late May and mid-June to Fish and Fish, located two nautical miles from Marsaxlokk, eastern Malta.

Fattened over five or six months at Fish and Fish, they will be sold to Japanese wholesalers.

By the time the tuna reaches Tokyo’s sushi restaurants, the value added reaches up to 100 euros (160 dollars) a kilo.

Thousands of tons of sardines, mackerels, herring and squid are fed each year to bluefin tuna at Mediterranean fish ranches to fatten them up for the Japanese sushi market.

Some are fed vitamins, as well as prawns to improve their colour, and even freeze-dried garlic to improve their blood circulation.

It takes around nine kilos of little fish to add one kilo of weight to a 60-kilo bluefin tuna, Maltese fish farmers say. Bigger fish require as many as 20 kilos of food to gain a kilo.

The Fish and Fish farm feeds more than 2,000 tons of fish to the caged bluefin, imported mainly from The Netherlands and Morocco.

While Malta leads the sector in the Mediterranean with six businesses that have a combined capacity of 12,000 tons, such ranches have also sprung up in Italy, Croatia, Libya, Spain, Tunisia and Turkey since the late 1990s.

The EU and environmental groups like Greenpeace and the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) say the lucrative business puts unacceptable pressure on other fishing resources, while advocacy groups such as the World Forum of Fisher Peoples decry the use of edible fish to feed tuna destined for wealthy Japanese.

The industry is meticulously monitored.

”Everything has to be documented from the moment the fish is fished until it is sold to Japan,” said Maltese fishing inspector Jean-Pierre Sant.

Caruana said the ranch’s only hope this year was that with less fish on the market the Japanese buyers will pay more.

Last year, the farm bought the fish for between eight and 10 euros and sold it on to the Japanese for 13 euros.

Sant noted that the bluefin caught to be fattened were getting smaller. Five years ago, fish weighing up to 300 kilos were not uncommon, Sant said, while today they average around 200 kilos.