Maltese fishermen consider the reduction in Malta’s tuna fishing quota as “a huge blow”, and expect that fishing for blue-fin tuna may have to stop as early as the end of May next year, shortly after the season opens.

Speaking to The Malta Independent on Sunday, Fishermen’s Cooperative president Ray Bugeja said the Maltese government had never done enough to defend its claim that 90 per cent of tuna fishing is carried out using traditional methods.

“Since most Maltese fishermen do not use purse seiners, the Maltese tuna-fishing industry’s effect on the tuna population is negligible,” he said.

Earlier this month, at a meeting in Recife, Brazil, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) decided to reduce the annual Atlantic blue-fin tuna-fishing quota to about one-third of current levels.

International conservation groups criticised ICCAT, saying that only a total ban on blue-fin tuna fishing would ensure that the fish is saved from extinction, but ICCAT argued that that imposing a total ban on blue-fin tuna would encourage illegal fishing.

The new ICCAT decision allows the fishing of 13,500 tonnes of blue-fin tuna in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean this year, almost two-thirds of the 19,950 tonnes previously permitted.

It also reduces the fishing season of seine ships, which use nets to encircle and trap shoals of blue-fin tuna, by a month.

In an analysis released earlier this year, the conservation organisation World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said the population of breeding tuna will be wiped out completely in three years, if fisheries’ managers and decision-makers keep ignoring the warnings from scientists that fishing must stop.

Sergi Tudela, head of fisheries at WWF Mediterranean, said: “Whichever way you look at it, the trend towards Mediterranean blue-fin tuna collapse is dramatic, it is alarming and it is happening now.”

The population of tuna that are capable of reproducing – fish aged four or over and weighing more than 35 kilogrammes – is being wiped out.

In 2007, the proportion of breeding tuna was only a quarter of the levels of 50 years ago, with most of the decline occurring in recent years.

Among the factors that have contributed to this dramatic decline, WWF identified the huge over-capacity of fishing fleets, catches that far exceed legal quotas, pirate fishing, the use of illegal spotting planes to chase the tuna, the under-reporting of catches, fishing during the closed season, management measures disregarding scientific advice and the insatiable appetite of the world’s luxury seafood markets.

It must be noted that while the Maltese fishing fleet’s contribution to the overall depletion of blue-fin tuna is hardly significant, the tuna-fishing trade contributes about e100 million to the Maltese economy annually.

But Maltese fishermen still believe that their blue-fin tuna catches are just a drop in the ocean, compared to those of other Mediterranean fishing fleets.

“There is definitely something lacking in the way Malta negotiated its position. About 90 per cent of our fishermen use traditional methods,” Mr Bugeja insisted.

Malta’s blue-fun tuna fishing quota was 342 tonnes in 2007, 262 tonnes this year and has been reduced further to 170 tonnes for next year. This year, Maltese fishermen reached their quota very early on in the season.

Asked what he expected to happen next year, Mr Bugeja said the Cooperative would declare its position after a stock assessment has been carried out.

fvella@independent.com.mt