Parliamentary Secretary of Fisheries and Animal Rights Clint Camilleri should resign over his failure to curb abuse by the fish farming industry, Partit Demokratiku insisted on Thursday.

“The aquaculture industry falls under his remit and it is disappointing to learn from fish farmers that after the 2016 sea pollution scandal brought about by the blue-fin tuna industry, no adequate regulation and monitoring measures were imposed by the secretariat,” it said, saying that the Auditor General has also warned that the industry was having a negative effect on the habitat.

“Tuna is caught from open Mediterranean seas every June, caged and fattened in fish farms, and harvested for export in October. This period coincides with Malta’s peak holiday and tourist season and since tonnes of slime and other excreta are an inevitable by-product of aquaculture farming, this pollution is inevitable unless very extraordinary measures are adhered to. Aquaculture farming, as a result of the concentrated fish biomass, is like having a tanker that daily spills out oil and excreta contaminating our sea, some of which turns into slime when the wind and currents are onshore.

The party also said that the Superintendent of Public Health was duty bound to monitor and issue temporary health warnings by banning swimming in bays which were heavily contaminated by slime and other aquacultural pollutants.

Four fish farm operators earlier this week introduced booms around every cage in a bid to collect the oily residue from fish feed.

Read: Booms on fish pens to reduce sea slime

This was one of the mitigation measures agreed with the Federation of Maltese Aquaculture Producers after slimy residue from fish feed started to appear along the coast in Marsascala, Sliema and other areas in recent days.

The lobby announced a series of self-regulatory measures to run from August until the end of October.