Malta's blue fin tuna quota to be cut by a third

Malta's fishing quota for blue fin tuna will be slashed by 30 per cent by 2010 in a global bid to ease the pressure on the fragile stocks in the Mediterraean.

The decision, which will deal a blow to Malta's lucrative industry, was one of many taken yesterday by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) after a week-long meeting in Marrakech, Morocco.

The 45 contracting parties agreed for the first time to start reducing the capacity of tuna farming in order to ease the pressure on the species, which, according to scientific experts, was facing extinction.

Malta is considered to host the world's leading tuna ranches and a reduced capacity will mean less business for farm owners and fishermen in Malta.

The wide-ranging measures taken by ICCAT will affect all EU member states fishing for tuna. Malta is likely to face less severe cuts than others, such as France, Italy and Spain, which have the biggest tuna quotas and the biggest fishing capacity.

"The measures are tough as we need to make sure that tuna catches are reduced drastically," a European Commission official said yesterday.

"Although Malta will be affected, other countries fishing with purse seiners will be hit harder because, apart from a drastic cut in their quota, we have also reduced their fishing season."

Maltese fishermen still use traditional long-line methods when catching blue fin tuna.

However, this was not the prevailing method used in other EU states, which had specifically-built industrial trawlers called purse seiners, catching hundreds of tunas at a go.

According to the Marrakech agreement, the EU, which at the ICCAT represents all its member states, will see its total catch for 2009 slashed to 22,000 tonnes compared to 28,500 tonnes this year, to be reduced further to 19,950 tonnes in 2010.

The EU also agreed that, subject to an early reassessment of the stock in 2010, it envisaged that its global quota would be reduced further to 18,500 tonnes in 2011. The EU's quota will now be distributed among members that fish for tuna.

Although the Commission still has to decide on exactly how much each country will get, sources close to the ICCAT talks said the new decision will translate into a quota of about 265 tonnes in 2009 and 240 tonnes in 2010 for Maltese fishermen. This means a reduction of about 30 per cent on this year's quota, which stood at 331 tonnes.

With regard to tuna farms, the possibility to increase capacity was impossible as this will be frozen at 2007-2008 levels.

At the same time, ICCAT decided that capacity will start being reduced in the coming years.

EU Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg backed the deal saying that tough action was needed to secure the future of blue fin tuna.

"ICCAT's revised recovery plan demands further sacrifices from the fishing industry," he said.

On the other hand, the agreement was slammed by pro-tuna non-governmental organisations, particularly Greenpeace and Oceanea, which said the decisions were not bold enough and would not prevent the extinction of tuna stocks in the Mediterranean.

Dubbing the agreement as "disastrous", Greenpeace said the EU and ICCAT decided to sacrifice the future of blue fin tuna at the expense of satisfying the industry's short-term economic interests.