Tuna "farms" - a new pressure

In the late 1990s came a new development in the bluefin tuna industry: tuna farms.

The farms are actually fattening pens for live-caught bluefin tuna, and supply a new market in Japan for cheaper bluefin tuna for sushi and sashimi. Suddenly, the prized bluefin was affordable for nearly all Japanese, not just the wealthy. Demand soared...and so did the fishing effort.

In 1996, the first tuna farms appeared in the Mediterranean, in the waters off Spain. By 2001, there were 12, in the waters off Spain, Italy, Malta, and Croatia. And by 2005 they had mushroomed to over 40, spreading to Turkey, Cyprus, Tunisia, and Libya.

The farms are now big business. In 2005, an estimated 28,450 tonnes of bluefin tuna went to the farms - nearly 90% of the total allowed annual quota for bluefin tuna for the entire Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.

In the Murcia region of Spain, where most farms are located, the value of tuna production increased dramatically from €3.1 million to €107.5 million in 2002. More than 90% of the fattened tuna goes to Japan, whose entire tuna imports were worth a mind-boggling $US1.49 billion just from January-September 2005.

Subsidized farms
Attracted by the money to be made, private investments have poured into Mediterranean tuna farms. Perversely, the farms are also eligible for EU subsidies for aquaculture (underwater agriculture) development - even though they are not aquaculture, as the tuna are caught from the wild. WWF conservatively estimates that €20 million were distributed to different stages of the Mediterranean EU tuna farming industry between 1997 and 2004.

New boats
Various countries have also taken advantage of EU subsidies to modernize their tuna-catching fleets. Purse seine fleets from France and Spain, the largest suppliers of tuna for farms, have been intensely modernized over the last few years. Older vessels have even been replaced by highly efficient new units, thanks to the generous EU funds all paid for by the European taxpayer. As a result, the fleets’ catching capacity has increased dramatically.