Fish facts – it is time to wake up

Nowadays it’s more of an exception for the beaches to be free of jellyfish than full of them. Our waters, together with the rest of the Mediterranean, have become infested with these stinging perils, constituting a genuine danger to bathers and causing problems to our prevalently coastal tourism.

The increase in numbers of these jellyfish swarms, also generically known as blooms, has been caused by an unbalance in the ecosystem and one of the principal factors causing this unbalance is the decrease in predators such as tuna, swordfish, shark and sea turtles. We can moan and whinge all we want about the beaches swarming with jellyfish but unless we take some action nothing is going to change, it will only get worse.

Stopping the overfishing is of course one of the actions that can be taken to tackle the invasion and every individual, even more than governments and international committees, can make an important contribution towards this goal.

Regulating and managing fisheries should certainly help in controlling overfishing. Industrial fishing fleets and professional fishermen in the Mediterranean persist in laying kilometres of drift nets. Although these nets have been declared illegal by the EU in 1997, their use is still practised by non-EU ships such as Morocco and others flying flags of convenience. EU countries, mainly Spain and Italy, then benevolently buy these illegally caught swordfish for our consumption.

The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas has also issued regulations prohibiting fishing for swordfish between October 1 and November 30, however it is felt that the closed season should be extended further so as to encourage rebuilding of stocks.

Similarly, long line fishermen carry on with the illegal practice of using smaller hooks and nets with smaller mesh size than permitted by existing regulations. This is leading to the catching of immature fish which results in an exponential decrease of fish stock since they are landed before they have time to breed. The net result is that the larger fish have all been caught and the only ones to be found are the small ones. One can notice this while visiting major fish markets around our islands where these undersized specimen are brazenly piled up on display. What is even more tragic is that our official statistics state that the total weight of landed swordfish has not decreased appreciably, which means that many small fish are being caught since no big ones have been left.

Regulations state that no swordfish fished in the Mediterranean Sea should be caught smaller than 110 cm or 16 kg round weight or 14 kg gilled and gutted weight but this is having very little effect on the outcome of the quantity of baby swordfish being caught. This is the beginning of the end of a species. This last regulation should be the easiest to enforce by the authorities, by inspecting fish markets and restaurants for possession of undersize swordfish. Clearly, this issue is completely off their radar and one may legitimately question whether this omission is plain inefficiency or whether there is some other darker reason for it.

Which brings me back to the action we, as consumers, can take to put a stop to this massacre. All that needs to be done is not buy, or order in restaurants, or consume baby swordfish, tuna and other endangered species. We need to support sustainable fishing to ensure that our fish diet tomorrow will not be reduced to farmed jellyfish and sardines.

We hear very much about bluefin tuna and measures which are being undertaken to protect its extinction, but swordfish will be facing the same fate in the near future if something is not done immediately.

Din l-Art Ħelwa is organising a State of the Fisheries conference with key speakers presenting their findings on March 25 to debate just these issues. We invite any interested member of the public to book participation by sending an e-mail to info@dinlarthelwa.org or by calling 2122 0358/2122 5952. Participation including lunch and coffee break is €25.