Malta is the world’s largest tuna rancher in the word, according to a report commissioned by tuna ranching consultancy Advanced Tuna Ranching Technologies (ATRT), and endorsed by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
“Malta has profited from what now looks much like a tailor-made plan and has emerged as the World’s Tuna Ranching leader with some 6,400,000 kg of tuna ,” claims Roberto Mielgo Bregazzi, a tuna industry consultant who previously carried out research for the World Wildlife Fund, in his study for the ATRT.
In his report Bregazzi also warns that the extinction of the Mediterranean tuna could lead to the proliferation of jellyfish.
Bregazzi claims that a vast quantity of tuna was transferred into cages around Malta during May and June 2007 – a period marked by rampant unsustainable fishing for tuna in the so-called Libyan fishing protection zone.
The 2007 estimate represented a sharp increase from the 4,750,000 kg of tuna ranched in Malta during in 2006.
According to Bregazzi, tiny Malta is now ranching more tuna than bigger countries like Australia, Mexico, Croatia, Italy and Spain.
Unlike fish farming, in which fish are reared for breeding, tuna penning involves the fattening in cages of tuna caught from the wild.
According to the report, 2007 witnessed the largest massacre of juvenile tuna stock as well as the wiping out of the Cyrenaica, Sirtica and Tripolitania bluefin tuna sub-stocks.
The report cites Japanese industry sources saying that 40% of purse seined catches in 2006, transferred to ranching cages in Malta, Italy, Croatia, Tunisia, Greece and Turkey, weighed less than 60 kg per fish while 70% weighed less than 80 kg.
Bregazzi notes that Libya refused to allow Frontex (EU’s border control agency) sea patrols close to its shores during a particularly busy summer for both irregular migration and a wild hunt for tuna.
Bregazzi insists that the European Commission’s closure of the bluefin tuna fishery in late September was too late to safeguard the depleted fishing stocks.
“The DG Fisheries had ample evidence of a serious threat to the conservation of living aquatic resources... resulting from fishing activities and yet refused to take immediate action”
He claims that all sorts of unpunished fishing offences have been committed inside the Mediterranean during 2007 by trawlers providing tuna ranches moored in countries like Malta.
The report singles out Italy, France, Japan and Spain for the biggest violations of international quotas for bluefin tuna fishing.
But the report also claims that in 2006 Malta had under-reported its real bluefin tuna catches to ICCAT SCRS by as much as 1.7 million kg.
The report warns that over fishing will not only lead to the extinction of bluefin tuna but will damage the Mediterranean Sea’ ecosystem once its main predator disappears.
“What will happen is unknown... The possibility of opportunistic predator species, such as squid or jellyfish, taking over the bluefin tuna’s niche, would certainly alter stocks of smaller pelagics such as sardines.”

jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt