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NEWS | Wednesday, 08 August 2007

Fishing frenzy drives tuna down by 40%

Raphael Vassallo

Serial over-fishing is propelling the bluefin tuna towards extinction, Greenpeace has warned as Malta’s National Statistic Office revealed that local catches of the giant ocean predator are down by a staggering 39.9 per cent over last year.
According to NSO figures published Monday, Maltese tuna landings are down from 199,960 kilos in the second quarter of last year to 120,119 kilos in the second quarter of 2007.
More worrying still, this season’s catch was also 40 per cent lower in weight, suggesting that specimens caught this year were less than half the customary size. According to conservationists, this suggests that the mature population would have been depleted at a faster rate than it could replenish itself: a sure-fire symptom of imminent stocks collapse.
Karli Thomas, an Oceans Campaigner with Greenpeace International, confirms that the status of Atlantic bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean is endangered. “It is too early to comment on those particular stats,” she said when asked for her interpretation of the NSO figures.
“But there is no doubt that world tuna stocks have declined in recent years. Greenpeace estimates that as much as 80 per cent of the Mediterranean bluefin tuna population has already been wiped out.”
Thomas places the blame for this alarming state of affairs squarely on rampant overfishing. “What is happening is that fishing fleets are depleting fishing grounds in succession. Having fished the tuna to extinction in one zone, they will then move to another and fish it to extinction there as well. Then on to the next, and so on. It is plain for all to see that this is not a sustainable method.”
As a result of these and other illegal practices, Thomas explains that Western Mediterranean fishing fleets find themselves steadily moving eastwards in search of new fishing zones.
This includes the gulf between Malta and Libya, where they find themselves in competition with local fishing fleets. The results are not always pretty: local fishermen often complain of a situation resembling open warfare on the high seas, characterised among other things by heavy Mafia involvement, although it must be said that illegality appears to be rampant on all sides.
This much was acknowledged by the environment ministry. Ray Bezzina, spokesman for Environment and Rural Affairs Minister George Pullicino, points out that Malta has always been at the forefront of the fight against illegal tuna fishing.
“Malta is 100 per cent committed to the ICAAT recovery plan”, he told MaltaToday in reference to the conservation programme drawn up by the International Atlantic Tuna Convention, of which Malta is a member. “In fact we are on record as having consistently demanded even more stringent regulations to control overfishing.”
Bezzina is also adamant that Maltese fishermen are not to blame for the decline in stocks. “Our fishing fleets are mainly traditional (‘artigjanali’),” he said, adding that the size of local vessels precludes the use of the enormous purse-seine nets employed by Europe’s industrial fleets.
“Having said that, we can’t exclude that some Maltese fishermen may be hiring foreign ships to avoid national quota restrictions. If so, this is illegal, and if where there is proof we will take action.”
The current fishing frenzy for tuna is a relatively recent development, driven largely (but not exclusively) by the disproportionate interest in the fish by the Japanese market. Sadly for the species, the Mediterranean variety of the Atlantic bluefin tuna is prized above all other marine delicacies in this seafood-crazy country. As a result, individual hauls of tuna can fetch anything up to a scarcely credible EUR15 million on the international market.



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