NEWS | Wednesday, 10 December 2008

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Report highlights ‘impossible’ tuna carry-over claims

Raphael Vassallo
A detailed dossier compiled by industry consultants, to be presented to the European press early next week, pinpoints a litany of discrepancies and inconsistencies in the Rural Affairs Ministry’s official declarations regarding the amount of live bluefin tuna carried over from 2007 to 2008.
Among the many anomalies highlighted in this 148-page report, compiled by Advanced Tuna Ranching Technologies, are glaring contradictions between information supplied by the Fisheries Division to the European Commission, and data released by the Fisheries Minister George Pullicino in parliament last month.
These contradictory claims concern some 1,357 tonnes of live tuna, worth over €20 million, allegedly carried over from 2007 to 2008.
At a glance, the report concludes that:
a) The quantity of live tuna inputted into individual cages, as claimed by the Fisheries Division in its declarations to the European Commission, is far in excess of the maximum density recommended by the Environmental Impact Assessment reports for each individual tuna farm.
b) In statements made separately to the Commission and the Maltese parliament, ministry officials supplied vastly different data regarding the origins of the claimed 1,357 tonnes of fish carried over from last year.
c) Photographic evidence suggests that of some of the fishing vessels cited by the Fisheries Division in connection with the above-mentioned catches were not even equipped with nets or winches at the time the same catches were allegedly made.

Overcrowded cages
According to Malta’s official caging declarations to the EU’s DG Mare for 2008, five fish farms between them currently hold approximately 1,347 tonnes of live bluefin tuna carried over from last season. These fish are allegedly being held in individual cages, varying between 50 and 70 metres in diameter, in the Ta’ Mattew, Malta Fish Farms and AJD Tuna Ltd ranches respectively.
For instance, a single 70m cage at the Ta’ Mattew farm purports to hold 414 tonnes of live fish; a 50m cage at Malta Fish Farms claims 243 tonnes; and two separate 50m cages belonging to AJD Tuna Ltd in St Paul’s Bay, declare 314 and 308 tonnes respectively, the report states.
However, the report alleges that these claims exceed by far the standard maximum density considered safe for the storage of live bluefin tuna. Citing the Project Description Statement for the Aquaculture Zone off Delimara (PA 00087/04), compiled by Dr Joseph Camilleri, the report observes that tuna penning operations generally limit their stocking density to between 2 and 3kg per cubic metre.
But none of the above caging volumes is less than 3kg/m3, the report says. In fact, the highest recorded density is 4.5kg/m3 at AJD Tuna Ltd’s cage 5 – almost double the maximum recommended by Maltese experts.
Claims that such high densities are “impossible”, as stated in the report, appear to be validated by the MEPA case officer reports into various applications for tuna penning facilities around Malta, unearthed by this newspaper in the course of its investigations this summer.
For instance, the DPA report for PA01741/01 – AJD Tuna Ltd’s tuna ranch in the Comino channel – states that “the four circular cages (of 50m in diameter) will cater for an intended production of about 350 metric tonnes per season”... in other words, less than 100 tonnes per cage.
The capacity claimed in Malta’s official declarations to the Commission for a single 70-metre cage is 415 tonnes, considerably more than the total amount envisaged to be held in four separate 50-m cages.
According to industry insiders who spoke to MaltaToday, under such crowded conditions the mortality rate would be considered too high to justify the expense involved in maintaining these fish. For the same reason, no insurance company would be willing to underwrite such an enormous financial risk.

Conflicting data
The origin of the claimed carry-over has also been called into question. In a document tabled by the Fisheries Minister George Pullicino in Parliament on 18 November, the 1,347 tonnes of live carry-over from 2007 to 2008 is explained as having been caught by Libyan, Moroccan, Korean and Maltese flagged vessels.
This contrasts with official caging declarations submitted to the European Commission by Fisheries Director Dr Anthony Gruppetta, which claim that a substantial portion of the same carry-over was caught by French and Italian purse-seiners. Significantly, these declarations make no mention whatsoever of any Korean-caught tuna.
For instance, nearly all of AJD Tuna Ltd’s carry-over is accounted for by Italian and French-caught tuna... which in turn suggests that if Mr Pullicino’s version were correct, none of that fish could possibly have been caught in 2007, as declared by Dr Gruppetta.
This discrepancy was also raised by a Spanish MEP during a meeting of the European parliament’s fisheries committee last week, who observed that it was not possible for both declarations to be correct. Ironically, this meeting took place on the same day (Tuesday) that the Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg commented on TVM’s Disset that Malta’s caging declarations appear to have been “validated” by Commission inspectors – without specifying which of two contradictory versions, both supplied by the same Ministry, he was referring to.

Unequipped vessels
The dossier also singles out a number of fishing vessels listed by the Fisheries Division in connection with individual catches in Malta’s official caging declarations. Among these is the Maltese-flagged vessel Azzurra II, which would have transferred 100 tonnes of live tuna into a Malta Fish Farms cage in 2007. This quantity is among the 1,347 tonnes allegedly carried over to 2008.
But photographic evidence supplied in the report suggests that at the time this catch was recorded, the “Azzurra II” was not equipped with the purse-seine nets and winches necessary to catch any fish at all.
Similarly, the Korean-flagged “Sajomelita” is reported to have caught 335 tonnes of live tuna in June 2008... at a time when photographic evidence suggests that it was not equipped for fishing.
A copy of this report has been forwarded for comments to the European Commissioner Dr Joe Borg. No reply was forthcoming by the time of going to print.

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