'Ranching' may wipe out tuna

[Mr T.]

'Ranching' may wipe out tuna
By Charles Clover
(Filed: 24/09/2004)

The bluefin tuna may soon be commercially extinct in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic as a result of the EU-subsidised practice of tuna "ranching" for the Japanese market, it was disclosed yesterday.

Roberto Mielgo, a consultant who was one of the designers of the tuna "farms" which have sprung up throughout the Mediterranean over the past decade, said he was speaking out before there was no tuna business left.

His report exposes the companies responsible for the gross overfishing, legal and illegal, of small tuna which are then fattened up for the Japanese market on "farms," where they never breed.

Mr Mielgo, who runs the Madrid-based firm Advanced Tuna-Ranching Technologies, said: "After 10 years in business, it is a matter of survival. If we don't change the way we work and the market is not properly regulated, there is the end of it."

The bluefin tuna is regarded by conservationists as the pinnacle of fish evolution: it can accelerate faster than a Porsche and travel at 50 mph, thanks to a mechanism which warms its blood.

Mr Mielgo said he had received threats from parts of the industry because of what he had disclosed in his report.

He details illegal flights by tuna spotter planes, operating from Greece, Sicily and in Libya during times when spotting activity is banned in the Mediterranean.

He says the amount of tuna arriving in Japan shows catches are far in excess of the quotas set by the much-criticised Madrid-based regulatory body, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.

The industry has been boosted by £12.5 million in EU "aquaculture" subsidies. "Farmed" tuna increased from 14,620 tons in 2002 to 22,500 tons last year.