Yes, everything is possible. Including 17 extra tuna pens...
OK, hands on buzzers, folks. It’s quiz time!
The first set of questions involves the precise quantity of tuna fattening cages currently floating on the surface of the Comino channel. You know, the ones plainly visible from the Gozo ferry, but which nobody seems to ever, ever notice... least of all, the Malta Environment and Planning Atrocity (otherwise known as “MEPA”.) Ready? Here goes: How many tuna cages – that is to say, large circular items, consisting of collar rings, nets and moorings, which cost somewhere in the region of €150,000 each – currently form part of the only ranch registered to operate in the Comino channel?
OK, I’ll give you a hint. You can count them for yourself in this photo, and then add one (which joined the others after that photo was taken) Answer? Yes indeed, it’s 21!
Second question. How many of these 21 tuna collar rings (because yes, the nets have indeed been removed) are covered by a valid MEPA permit?
Answer? Four. That’s right: four. Not a collar less, not a collar more.
And if you don’t believe me, here is an excerpt from the farm’s existing permit:
“The following cages will be deployed within the site identified in condition 3:
(i) a maximum of 4 tuna penning cages (electrofused HDPE tubing with a 50m collar diameter and a 20m deep net) as per drawing PA 1741/01/51G;
(ii) a maximum of 7 Dunlop cages as approved in PA 4052/92, and a single 20m diameter cage to be used for sea bream/sea bass farming; the mooring layout will be as per PA 1741/01/51G.
(In case you were wondering, all 21 cages are for tuna, and there is not a single 20-metre Dunlop collar ring on site)
Right. Now for the more difficult questions.
Who actually owns this enormous, unauthorised (if at present inoperative) tuna ranch?
Hmm. This one’s tricky. According to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) – i.e., the international regulator to which Malta is a contracting party country – the answer would be a certain “Azzopardi, Charles”.
But according to Malta’s Director of Fisheries, Dr Anthony Gruppetta, the answer is actually “Malta Mariculture Ltd” (see letter on page 22).
This is strange, because ICCAT relies exclusively on information provided by the European Commission’s DG Mare to compile its register of Maltese bluefin tuna farming facilities; and the DG Mare, in turn, relies exclusively on information provided by Dr Anthony Gruppetta himself.
Are we to understand, then, that Dr Gruppetta would have supplied the European Commission with one set of data, and MaltaToday with another?
But hang on! There may be a simple explanation to account for this apparent double registration. Gruppetta provides the DG Mare with an update on Malta’s farms on April 30 each year. It is perfectly possible that the farm may have changed hands after that date; in which case ICCAT’s information would have been correct at the time it was given.
Trouble is, I think someone ought to inform Mr Azzopardi that the farm no longer belongs to him. Charles, you see, is currently in court with Gruppetta, arguing that he has (and here I quote) “an annual quota of 3,200 tonnes of tuna.”
Leaving aside the fact that “annual quotas” are given to countries, not individuals (and that Azzopardi, despite all the evidence to the contrary, is not quite a sovereign state in his own right... yet) the two farms currently registered under Azzopardi’s name are St Paul’s Bay (2,400 tonnes) and Comino (800 tonnes). Do the math.
Which brings us nicely to question 4. How much tuna can the Comino farm actually hold?
The answer depends entirely on how you look at things. Charles Azzopardi himself claims the right to input 800 tonnes, and he is supported in this claim by ICCAT. But neither ICCAT nor Azzopardi (still less Gruppetta) appears to have bothered letting MEPA in on this little secret. Otherwise, how are we to explain the fact that the MEPA permit only allows for a maximum of 350 tonnes into that same ranch? And only in four of his 21 cages?
Of course, all this talk becomes a little academic when you look at the actual ranch itself. Permits? Quotas? Fiddlesticks! Look at the picture again and imagine for a second all those collar rings had nets... which, for all we know, they could easily do by the time the tuna season starts again next Spring. (In fact, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would invest an estimated €3 million+ on cages he had no intention of ever using). The amount of tuna it would be suddenly be able to contain would be somewhere in the region of 3,150 tonnes. That’s 10 times more than its MEPA permit allows, and almost four times the amount specified by ICCAT.
(Oh, and in case I haven’t stressed this point enough: the fish we are talking about is classified as “critically endangered”...)
OK, folks, last question before wrapping up. Why has MEPA – the authority which unleashes Hell on earth upon lesser mortals for the tiniest of permit infringements – not lifted a single finger in the face of an irregularity of such enormous proportions?
Well, I asked MEPA that question myself this week, and this is what the authority’s communications co-ordinator, Mr Peter Gingell, had to say:
“Kindly note that from our investigations it results that the permitted fish farm at Comino is currently not in use. The 21 collar rings (without their nets) that are being temporary parked in this permitted area for fish farming activities are not anchored to the seabed but affixed to the mooring of the approved non-operational fish farm. Once the collar rings are within the coordinates stipulated in the permit conditions and their anchoring not caused any impacts on the water column and seabed, then the temporary parking of the collar rings activity is not infringing permitted activity of this area and so there is no conflict with the permissible activity granted for this fish farm.”
Huh? What? OK, let me if I’ve got this right. 1) The farm is legal, because it is not in use. 2) The farm is legal, because it lies entirely within the originally established co-ordinates.
That second part is somewhat debatable, and I would appreciate it enormously if Mr Gingell could kindly make public the approved drawing number PA 1741/01/51G... thereby sparing me the hassle of going to MEPA’s offices and digging it up myself.
But to be honest it’s the first part that intrigues me. So according to MEPA’s official spokesman, if you are granted a permit to put out eight tables for your open-air restaurant, but you somehow “temporarily park” 32 instead... it’s not a problem, so long as the extra 16 tables are never used.
Alternatively, if MEPA gives you a permit for a development over a fixed area of land, and you build something completely unlike the plans approved by the permit... well, it doesn’t really matter, so long as your development covers the same surface area as envisaged by the permit.
By the same token, if you acquire a permit to build a supermarket and you accidentally build a nuclear power station instead... who cares? It only becomes illegal the moment you hit the “ON” button.
And so on, and so forth, and so fifth.
I mean, honestly. And I thought I had something of a knack for taking the piss. But this? This is sheer genius. Piss-taking taken to the level of art-form. The Leonardo Da Vinci of piss-artists. In fact, with all the piss that’s been taken out of me this week, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to urinate properly again.
But no matter: I know when I’m beaten. If MEPA says the farm is legal, then legal the farm is. Just bear in mind that the moment those empty cages are put to any form of use whatsoever... well, I’ll be asking Mr Gingell to repeat his statement above.
A few more questions before I go, but this time you can work them out for yourselves...
1) Which Cabinet minister was politically responsible for MEPA between April 2003 and March 2008... during which time the Comino farm multiplied exponentially without any additional permit to cover the extension?
2) Who was MEPA chairman over the same period?
3) Who is MEPA chairman today?
4) Who (supposedly) shouldered full political responsibility for MEPA shortly before the last election, after a pre-electoral promise to address the “environmental deficit” in the same way as he had previously (and it now must be said, not entirely) turned around the economic hofra?
5) According to the popular Maltese proverb, which part of a fish stinks the most?
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Ready? Here goes: How many tuna cages – that is to say, large circular items, consisting of collar rings, nets and moorings, which cost somewhere in the region of €150,000 each – currently form part of the only ranch registered to operate in the Comino channel?