After a decade of over-fishing that lasted until 2007, are we still not doing enough to avert the extinction of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean?
At a discussion organised by Din l-Art Ħelwa last month the debate circled around whether the ‘Wild West’ days of rampant illegal fishing for tuna are well and truly over.
Bluefin tuna is one of the sea’s most valuable species. As the number of tuna goes down, its market price goes up. A dwindling tuna stock can only mean higher prices for short-termprofiteers.
Malta, with the largest tuna ranching facilities in the Mediterranean, was the only member state to vote against an EU decision to back the proposal to ban the tuna trade last year. The argument was that banning trade in tuna would cost the Maltese economy one per cent of its GDP. Half of EU tuna production comes out of Maltese pens.
An updated assessment of the vulnerable bluefin tuna stock by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) is due in 2012.
Last November, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published a report on how ICCAT member nations mismanaged bluefin tuna stocks in the Mediterranean over a 10-year period.
A dozen journalists traced a trail that led from major fishing fleets and tuna ranches in the Mediterranean and North Africa, through ministry offices, to some of the world’s largest buyers in Japan.
Their investigation found that gross mismanagement in the reporting of catch totals was behind a $4 billion black market in bluefin tuna. It has been claimed that only a quarter of tuna catches made between 1998 and 2007 were legal.
The team of journalists uncovered a supply chain which they said was riddled with fraud, negligence, and criminal misconduct every step of the way.
A clampdown was indirectly triggered in 2007, when the EU Commission first suspected that the level of cod landings in the Baltic Sea was being severely under-declared. Inspectors were sent to double-check the results of the national declaration and inspection systems. After the true weight of uninspected landings was analysed, thefishery was closed and ‘payback’ of overfished stock wasnegotiated.
It was in the same year that the Commission also noticed that several member states had not taken proper measures to keep catches in the Mediterranean bluefin tuna fishery within legal limits. That year, France fished well over 10,000 tonnes. This year its quota will be less than 1,000 as a payback mechanism is put in place.
“Fisheries are one of the most criminalised sectors in the world,” according to Daniel Pauly, a marine biologist at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Pauly was one of the earliest voices to warn of the impact of commercial fishing on marine ecosystems.
“This generates so much money that it’s like drugs”, is his opinion of illegal operations within the industry.
There has been at least one nearby example of this. Mourad Trabelsi, a brother-in-law of the former Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, operated four large tuna ranches for fattening of wild bluefin tuna, together with the Spanish Fuentes group.
Amid the recent uprisings he was held on charges of drug trafficking. The arrest was expected to topple the tuna empire of the Trabelsi clan in Tunisia.
Though not always an outright criminal market, the pervasive lack of accountability andwidespread practice ofunder-reporting catch amounts gave rise to a roaring off-the-books trade.
Last July, the anti-poaching operative Sea Shepherd crossed swords with a Maltese fishing expedition that was afloat and taking tuna allegedly outside season. The government insisted they were within the law.
Captain Paul Watson, who led the action on the high seas, challenged the catch as being unlawful for a number of reasons.
Speaking at last week’s debate on overfishing, former EUfisheries commissioner Joe Borg, said that setting a loweroptimum sustainable yield (OSY) when fixing tuna fishing quotas might be more appropriate than the present yardstickof a maximum sustainableyield (MSY).
OSY is defined as the largest economical yield of a renewable resource achievable over a long time period without decreasing the ability of the population or its environment to support thecontinuation of this level of yield, while MSY is the largest yield or catch that can be taken from a species’ stock over an indefinite period.
NGOs in favour of a ban on fishing the dwindling tuna species into extinction have been chided and warned not to get ‘too emotional’.
In fact, it is often the fishermen who are most likely to become emotional over the possible loss of their livelihood. Some are even convinced that NGOs exist solely to undermine them and are ‘paid to destroy fishermen’.
Reports of frozen tuna being stockpiled are thought to be a sign that sectors of the industry may be resigned to the inevitable demise of tuna.
Planning ahead for looming extinction would bring an even more lucrative price for supply of frozen tuna, while it lasts.
The Federation of Maltese Aquaculture Producers has been carrying out growth rate trials on penned wild tuna which they say may have a bearing on stock assessments.
Dr Borg commented that “overdoing it with farmed fish is not the solution for overfishing.” His remark was backed up by Victor Axiaq, head of the University’s Biology Department, who added that “we should not transfer the problem from one place to another”.
A reported increase in size last year in tuna caught off Spain and Morocco triggered renewed enthusiasm in fishermen, who took it as a sign that we may be turning back from crisis point. However, such data needs to be looked at in its full cntext.
The UN Food and Agriculture organisation has admitted that tuna penning has made the reliable estimation of tuna catches much more difficult.
This year, for the first time, cameras and divers in the tuna pens will be used to count the number of tuna transferred,suggesting that the problempersists.
Immature swordfish are frequently seen in local fish markets, as there is still no effective legislation to limit the catch size. To protect the swordfish and tuna fisheries, an ecosystem approach to the marine environment is needed.Complete control of catches at designated landing sites cannot be done properly as long as resources are lacking.
The regulations sound good on paper but observers pointout that when anyone bothersto look, they find there are infringements.
Our ability to catch fish still exceeds the number of fish available, although it is hoped this will change after the size of the shipping fleet is reduced.