Malta's tuna industry is questioning the scientific evidence quoted by WWF and Greenpeace and believes there is no need for an international ban as the tuna stocks in the Mediterranean are still healthy.
This comes as the 48 contracting parties of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) started meeting in Recife, Brazil yesterday to decide on the future of this lucrative fishery.
Malta is represented at the Brazil meeting by Fisheries Department officials and a delegation from the recently-formed Federation of Maltese Aquaculture Producers.
Millions of euros are at stake as Malta is considered to have the largest tuna ranching facilities in the world exporting about €100 million worth of the species to Japan last year.
A spokesman for the Maltese federation dismissed the declarations made by WWF and Greenpeace that ICCAT scientists had agreed there should be a total ban on bluefin tuna. The federation said both organisations misquoted the scientists' advice.
"It is not true ICCAT scientists said bluefin tuna stocks have reached the point where they should be included in the UN convention of endangered species and that fishing should be banned," he said.
On the contrary, he said, the scientists' committee concluded that the wild population of eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna was not considered small; that its spatial distribution could generally be considered to be wide and that, due to the high level of uncertainty in the scientific analysis, various scenarios of productivity and catch history were plausible.
Confronted by these declarations, a WWF spokesman in Brussels said the organisation stood by its stand that bluefin tuna stocks had reached rock bottom and if a ban was not introduced the fishery would collapse.
"With all due respect to the Maltese tuna industry and its scientists, the outcome of the ICCAT scientists' meeting is extremely clear and obvious to any average fisheries' scientist," he said.
"The current level of stock depletion qualifies bluefin tuna for a total ban in international trading because the current size of the spawning population is below the 15 per cent threshold of the historical baseline," the spokesman said.
"Additional analysis by WWF's scientists confirms the dire status of stocks and shows that only a quota set at zero might generate enough recovery of the stocks so they would no longer be eligible for CITES Appendix I listing (endangered species) in 10 years' time with probability higher than 50 per cent."
This contradictory position between the tuna industry and the environmental lobby groups is expected to dominate ICCAT's Brazil meeting.
Malta's industry, spearheaded by owners of tuna fish farms, is vehemently opposed to a total ban that would deal a death blow. Instead, they are insisting that the present management plan should remain in place as this is giving the desired results.
"The federation expects the continued enforcement of the current recovery plan to ensure the industry can be sustained in the longer term."
Malta was one of the EU member states that blocked a proposal put forward by the European Commission last month to support Monaco's bid to declare a ban on all international trade of bluefin tuna. The Commission's proposal was also opposed by other tuna-dependent member states including Italy, France, Spain and Greece.