Malta has always ensured that all its bluefin tuna activities are properly reported and documented at the appropriate levels. The Recommendations by ICCAT concerning bluefin tuna farming (Recs. 03-09, 04-06 and 05-4) require the establishment and maintenance of a record of facilities authorised to operate for farming of bluefin tuna caught in the Convention area. The information required from Parties under whose jurisdiction the Farming Facilities of Bluefin tuna are located is the following: name of the Farming Facility of Bluefin tuna and register number; names and addresses of owner (s) and operator (s); location; farming capacity (in t).
Thus by registration it is meant that the operator will be allowed to use the site in order to cage bluefin tuna if the operator manages to buy bluefin tuna under a regular catch quota. As already stated in your articles, bluefin tuna fishing is a very controlled activity and the amount of bluefin tuna available for farming is always dictated by the catch quotas decided at ICCAT level, and not by the potential capacity of the farms.
Thus your author once again entertained the public with a sensational write up studded with inexact information and statements.
The operators of Mediterranean Tuna Ltd had obtained full development permission from MEPA. This entitled them to operate. Indeed in various contacts with this Division, the operators had expressed their wish to operate and therefore were legally and formally listed with our operational units. The fact that they did not procure fish and therefore did not anchor cages is a purely commercial situation decided by the events that this company faced.
This Division developed a policy to group tuna farming activity and place this as offshore as possible. The full development permission for the Aquaculture Zone with a total capacity of 9,000 tons was issued by MEPA to this Division in January 2004. Once this development permission was released the Division took into consideration all applications that were registered for operating tuna penning activities that had been pending before MEPA and the Division itself. This meant that Mare Blu Tuna Farm, Ta’ Mattew Fish Farms and Deep Sea Aquaculture were allocated capacities of 1,500 tons each within the Aquaculture Zone. The other three sites within this zone were maintained for the relocation program of Malta Fishfarming, Fish and Fish and Mediterranean Tuna Ltd.
Mediterranean Tuna Ltd had until last December to set up its activities. These rights have now been lost and next year a different operator from the list of requests available may be given the opportunity to set up operations within the Aquaculture Zone. As such Benghajsa will be completely deregistered for the 2009 season.
Along with these tuna penning operations in the southeast, we have also registered from onset the Malta Mariculture Ltd farm in the Comino Channel and the AJD Tuna Ltd farm off St. Paul’s Islands.
The fact that aerial photos of Benghajsa show no cages or collars reflects the reality of events where Mediterranean Tuna Ltd has the opportunity to operate but did not procure fish with a catch quota and therefore did not anchor any cages.
Deep Sea Aquaculture Ltd may have legal proceedings but these do not involve control issues or this division. They may be purely commercial or civil in nature.
Declarations to ICCAT are made at specific timeframes. In fact registration of farming facilities has to be done in line with Council Regulation 1936/2001 before 30 April. It is just a coincidence that this date falls after 26 and 27 March which were the dates of the meeting in Japan.
The information that your author gives about the list of participants at the Tokyo meeting is also incorrect. Mr David Azzopardi was present on behalf of Fish & Fish and not AJD. Besides this Mr Salvu Ellul was also present on behalf of Malta Fish Farming.
As outlined above Malta has never declared any phantom farms. One also has to understand that the association made by the author on potential capacities of farms and possible potential accrued profits is far from the reality of the situation. Reality is that the value of the bluefin tuna that can be calculated has to take into consideration only the tuna bought with catch quotas and not the potential capacity that may remain partially or completely empty due to a list of situations.
A simple example of capacity and potential profits are hotels that may have 500 beds but unless they manage to obtain bookings and finally unless patrons turn up the capacity of the hotel will remain there but it will not be functional and will definitely not yield the profits envisaged.
Anthony Gruppetta
Director of Fisheries
Editor’s note: This reply is full of inaccuracies. Malta Mariculture Ltd is not listed as a registered bluefin tuna farming operation by ICCAT. The Comino channel farm - which has 17 more tuna pens than its Mepa permit allows - is registered under AJD Tuna Ltd, a subsidiary of Azzopardi Fisheries. The Fisheries Division may wish to explain why it consistently tries to disguise this fact. As for Mediterranean Tuna Ltd, this has not operated any tuna ranches in Benghajsa since 2002. There are no ICCAT-registered operators (still less addresses) for Deep Sea Aquaculture. All this can easily be verified on ICCAT’s website (www.iccat.int)
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