If you may recall, we spent a good part of last summer complaining that the quality of our bathing waters had gone to the dogs, or rather, to the tuna.

Hardly a day would pass without people complaining about the slime that was invading our surrounding seas, with no part of Malta being spared.

In reality, we had already been inundated by tuna slime in 2017. In March of that year the NGO “Stop the slime” had provided photographs showing large areas of white foam gracing our seas under Wignacourt Tower in St Paul’s Bay and in Exiles Bay, Sliema.

But 2018 was even more extraordinary. Here is a recap of what we had to go through that summer.

August 1: the fish farm slime hit Marsa-scala. Swimmers had to forget what swimming in clear waters was all about. 

August 7: a dead tuna was seen floating among the swimmers in Għar id-Dud, Sliema, while slime was reported by those who were trying to refresh themselves in Marsascala.

August 11: the tuna slime travelled a good number of kilometres and arrived at the Dragonara Lido in St Julian’s, to the ‘great joy’ of locals and tourists alike.

August 14: another large dead tuna was washed ashore in Qui-Si-Sana, with two men unsuccessfully trying to drag it onto the rocks. Who knows if this carcass ever finished in the plates of the sushi and sashimi aficionados.

August 15: the peak of summer, the feast of Santa Marija, the infamous slime was signalled off the coast of Xgħajra. What a destiny for this quaint seaside town. For years the sea had been out of bounds because of the raw sewage seeping into the sea in untold quantities. 

Was this Santa Marija slime a premonition of the gods to prepare the inhabitants of Xgħajra for future disasters, such as the approved 12-storey coastal building at Smart City, the proposed 15-storey building on Xgħajra agricultural land or the dreaded land reclamation proposal?

And then, on August 17, we had the fourth or fifth tuna corpse floating in the supposedly second cleanest seas of the EU.

This time, this unfortunate carcass ended up in St George’s Bay amidst the flabbergasted swimmers, in front of the rocky beach that has since been shamelessly given off by the government to its favoured DB owner, Silvio Debono. The tuna corpse was jet-skied off by a couple of lads.

Today, we might have a really good clue why every summer we are swimming in tuna slime

At the end of August, the tuna pen owners were still protesting their innocence and, indeed, they promised (cross my heart!) Environment Minister José Herrera that all had been solved by them and no more slime would pollute our waters.

And yet, from September till November at least, various reports of slime infesting our supposedly very clean bathing water  was reported in Mellieħa, St Paul’s Bay, Buġibba, St Thomas Bay and what not.

In November, the tuna pen owners reported that tuna sales for 2017 netted €168 million. More than 13,000 tonnes of tuna had been sold, a 16 per cent increase over the previous year. However nobody came up with the amount of millions that had been lost by the thousands of Maltese and tourists who had their summer ruined because of the slime infesting our seas.

The mystery still persisted: with the tuna pen owners continuously denying that their business was the cause of the slime, how could we ever find out where this was really coming from?

Today, we might have a really good clue why every summer we are swimming in tuna slime, which basically invades all our country’s coastline.

We have just found out that the Maltese Director of Fisheries is being investigated by the Spanish authorities since she is suspected of having asked for bribes from the Spanish owner of the tuna company, Mare Blu, in order to “secretly” increase the quota of the tuna harvested by this company in Maltese waters.

Indeed, in one telephone conversation intercepted by the Spanish investigative authorities on June 20 last year, Andreina Fenech Farrugia is alleged to have told Jose Fuentes, the owner of Mare Blu: “I’m in Bulgaria just for you, you have to pay me, because there’s a meeting and I’m with the [director] general of Brussels.”

Great. She was all there just for him. Certainly not for us. According to the Spanish police records, seven days later, on June 27, Fuentes was to meet Malta Ministry officials to try and raise his tuna quota from 3,000 to 4,000 tonnes.

Indeed, it has been reported that the Spanish police revealed that, in reality, Fuentes’s company holds cages in Malta of up to 9,000 tonnes.

The other telephone conversation transcripts reproduced by this newspaper make shocking reading.

So, if this underhanded increase in the number of tuna farmed in Maltese waters were confirmed, this could explain the reason why our seas have been invaded by slime in the past years.

Basically, thanks to corrupt officials possibly taking bribes, we all end up swimming in the tuna slime. But why should we complain? After all, they make cosmetics out of the fish slime.

Let’s be positive, then.

Arnold Cassola, candidate for European elections, is former secretary general of the European Green Party.

This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece

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