Half a million bluefin tuna larvae spawned in Maltese waters this summer are being reared in a state-of-the-art Korean hatchery facility following a successful partnership between a local fish farm and a South Korean government entity.
Ta’ Mattew Fish Farms director Raymond Bugeja has grown so frustrated with trying to persuade the government to grant them the land to build a similar facility in Malta that he sent the Maltese eggs to the National Fisheries Research and Development Institute on Juju Island, to prove he “means business”.
“Malta should have a tuna hatchery because we are the hub of this industry. But the Maltese authorities are making us the laughing stock when we are at the table with potential partners. They cannot believe it takes so long for a government entity to give an answer,” Mr Bugeja said.
Mr Bugeja, who is also president of the Fisheries Cooperative, claims he had top level meetings with the Rural Affairs Ministry in January 2010 to present his company’s proposals to build a bluefin tuna fish hatchery in Malta.
Before that, Ta’ Mattew had invited specialist Japanese scientists to assess the suitability of conditions in Malta and had contracted a local company, Adi Associates Environmental Consultants, to identify sites close to the sea, within planning regulations for the construction of such a facility. Adi completed its report in November 2009 and 15 sites were presented to the ministry, Mr Bugeja said.
All the necessary funds were in place to build the facility in partnership with the South Korean institute, but he claimed local bureaucracy was frustrating his plans, as he is passed from one department or entity to another without receiving a straight answer.
The logistics of transporting the Maltese-spawned eggs to South Korea were quite staggering, Mr Bugeja explained.
He said after collecting the eggs in the morning, they only had a window of 42 hours before the eggs would die. After transporting the eggs from his farm five miles offshore by boat, they had to be taken directly to the airport and flown by private courier service on a chartered Lufthansa plane to Juju Island.
Mr Bugeja claims the 500,000 tuna larvae which have ‘hatched’ in South Korea came from a total cargo weighing just 10kg. The eggs were packed in special containers with clean water and oxygen.
When Mr Bugeja visits his “Maltese tuna” in South Korea in mid-September, he said they will weigh between 300g and 500g and, in three years’ time, 60kg to 70kg.
According to Mr Bugeja, a tuna hatchery is ‘eco-friendly’ and sustainable as tuna farmers will not need to focus so much on catching wild bluefin tuna, which environmentalists, conservationists and many scientists argue is in urgent need of protection due to overfishing.
Mr Bugeja claimed a tuna hatchery will produce a self-perpetuating population of farmed bluefin tuna, although the concerns associated with fish farms – including the potential for genetically inferior fish, and the need to catch other small fish to feed captive bluefin tuna, removing them from the wild food chain in the process – are likely to intensify as more fish are bred in captivity.
Malta is at the epicentre of many concerns surrounding the sustainability of the Atlantic bluefin tuna population due to its lucrative tuna farming industry, with annual exports to Japan worth €80 million and €100 million.
Malta was one of the Mediterranean countries which successfully opposed cuts by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas in the EU’s total bluefin tuna quota for this year.
When contacted, a ministry spokesman said they were planning a new commercial sized hatchery that will include a bluefin tuna spawning facility.
“We are aware of the need and urgency of constructing a commercial sized hatchery. In fact, we have already identified a number of sites and carried out an alternative site assessment through the use of funds from the European Fisheries Fund,” the spokesman said, adding €1 million was available for this project through the Fund.
“The main obstacles are that a site close to the shore is required and until now no site has been approved, but the ministry supports aquaculture and promotes progress of this industry. In fact, a detailed Aquaculture Strategy is being produced and a draft will be available in the near future,” the spokesman added.