Precious red and black coral discovered in Maltese coastal waters

The paper, compiled mainly from grey literature and through interviews with local fishermen and former directors of the Mediterranean Coral Fishing Company instituted in 1984, reveals how over 1 tonne of the precious red coral (Corallium rubrum) and over 250 kg of black coral were fished from Maltese coastal waters over the 1984-1987 period, when the same company was operational.

Such a company was set up with the aim of supplying jewellery markets abroad with, initially, raw coral material, and subsequently, even with the processed product itself as a number of locals mastered the art of moulding red coral in every imaginable artefact.

The company even deployed a manned, midget submersible and a modified French destroyer to harvest such coral and employed a number of local and Italian fishermen.

A map of coastal locations around the Maltese Islands from where precious coral was fished is also included in the paper.

Fishermen generally used a device akin to the ‘barra italiana”, a heavy metal bar with nets attached at intervals alonged its length and which was dredged along the seabed to collect precious coral.

After examination of a black coral specimen housed at the Natural History Museum in Mdina, it transpired that the species in question could actually be Leiopathes glaberrima, which purportedly can survive for over 2,000 years!

The discovery, in Alan Deidun’s words, is “momentous”as it sheds light on a long-lived species previously known locally to fishermen only, despite being harvested commercially for so long and being housed in the local natural history museum, with the discovery also being made in the year dedicated by the United Nations to biodiversity.

In the Mediterranean, black coral is only known from a handful of other locations, mainly concentrated in the north-west Mediterranean and in the Adriatic.

In view of their slow growth rate and long life span, precious corals are considered to be highly vulnerable to human disturbance and the exploitation of precious coral species is strictly prohibited in Maltese waters.

Precious red coral (Corallium rubrum) is heavily exploited throughout the Mediterranean, with such fisheries existing in Malta even as way back as in the first century BC. Previous to this publication, the only precious coral resources recorded from Maltese waters were those located offshore to our islands, at considerable depths ranging from 585m to 819m, mostly between Malta and Linosa, and more coastal waters were generally considered as bereft of precious coral.