Greenpeace campaigners have arrived in Malta to begin their campaign to demand a global network of fully protected marine reserves.

Campaigners arrived on board the Rainbow Warrior, the international environment organisation’s well-known ship, which will set sail across the southern Mediterranean to witness and document the bluefin tuna crisis.

Greenpeace is demanding the immediate closure of the fishery and the creation of a network of marine reserves to protect marine ecosystems and allow exploited fish stocks to recover.

Scientists around the world have insisted that bluefin tuna is one of the key species upon which the Mediterranean ecosystem strongly depends, but the species may disappear and not re-emerge for decades.

Last year, member states of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) failed to adopt a programme that would help the recovery of the population of this species, which is at high risk of collapse due to the amount of

illegal catches in the Mediterranean region.

Despite the ICCAT’s own scientists warning that only catches lower than 15,000 tonnes would allow the bluefin tuna population to start recovering, last November ICCAT approved a quota of 29,500 tonnes for 2007.

Control measures were also approved to deal with the high level of illegal catches, but they will not come into force until after this year’s fishing season.

The Libyan coast in the southern Mediterranean is one of the last healthy bluefin tuna areas in the Mediterranean and it has been estimated that over 200 purse seiners, with the capacity to harvest 35,000 tonnes of bluefin tuna, may converge on this area during the coming weeks.

The bluefin tuna crisis is such that Greenpeace already has indications that fishermen in the trap fisheries in the south of Spain and north of Morocco have caught only 20 per cent of what they had caught by this time last year.

The 2006 season was already one of very low catches. These traditional traps are also catching smaller tuna than in previous years, confirming a very worrying trend that the largest tuna – crucial for the reproduction of the species – are disappearing from the Mediterranean.

Addressing a media conference on board the Rainbow Warrior, which is currently berthed at the Grand Harbour Marina in Vittoriosa, Greenpeace Spain oceans campaigner Sebastián Losada said the bluefin tuna fishery is totally out of control.

“Governments have shown their complete inability to guarantee the sustainable exploitation of this species, which is essential to Mediterranean ecosystems as well as to the region’s economy and culture. All fleets should be called back to port, otherwise this could be the last year for the bluefin tuna fishery in the Mediterranean,” he said.

Mr Losada said EU fleets were mainly responsible for the depletion of bluefin tuna, and France and Italy were the leaders that were blocking the consensus on the recovery plan.

Asked about Malta’s contribution to the depletion of bluefin tuna, Mr Losada said Malta is a big farming country, with a capacity of almost 10,000 tonnes. He said, however, that fishing in the entire Mediterranean region was contributing to the depletion of fish stocks.

Greenpeace France oceans campaigner François Provost said there was an urgent need for a radical change in the way the oceans were managed.

He added that the protection of ocean ecosystems was crucial for millions of people who were dependent on them for their livelihood, particularly local fishermen and communities.

“The creation of marine reserves is the only way to both protect and restore the marine environment and to allow exploited fish stocks to recover,” said Mr Provost.

Greenpeace is campaigning for a global network of fully protected marine reserves covering 40 per cent of the world’s oceans as an essential way to protect the full range of marine life and restore the health of fish stocks.

In Europe, Greenpeace is demanding that EU member states include the provision for such a network in a new marine law, the Marine Strategy Directive.

As part of this campaign, the environment organisation’s Arctic Sunrise is sailing across the North Sea, confronting fishing vessels that are rapidly taking the cod towards commercial extinction. The Rainbow Warrior is confronting the tuna fleets that are wiping out the last of the great fish in the Mediterranean.