Brussels told to help Maltese fishers against Tunisian lampuki thieves

An old feud between Maltese and Tunisian fishers shows no signs of abating despite decades-long attempts at forcing some form of state action against theft and abusive actions during the lampuki season.

Fishing co-op members who spoke to MaltaToday complained that Tunisian fishermen were pilfering lampuki catches from their float rafts, the kannizzatti devices where dozens of floats along some three miles are used to lure the fish.

“Nothing changes,” one fisherman who spoke to this newspaper said. “Tunisian fishermen just steal our catch, year in, year out.”

The lampuka row is nothing new: already in 2001, the ministry for fisheries had made its own attempts at intervening with Tunisian authorities. At the time, the ministry had reported allegations that Tunisian fishermen were deliberately towing kannizzati – the aggregating device used by lampuki fishermen – so that Maltese fishermen will be unable to find the fish beneath the float rafts. “The problem lies to the south of Malta around 45 miles out at sea, while Gozitan fishers are encountering their own problems around 36 to 65 miles off Gozo,” the ministry had said, saying it had requested the intervention of the Tunisian fisheries department and asked the Armed Forces of Malta to give Maltese fishermen protection at sea.

But 18 years later, the situation seems not to have changed for Maltese fishermen, a Marsaxlokk veteran said, preferring to stay anonymous. “This is expensive and laborious work, and to have Tunisian fishermen simply take away the fish we have lured to our floats, is criminal.”

The traditional Maltese lampuki fishers have a time-tested method to attract lampuki, or dolphin fish to the surface. They use palm fronds which are woven into large, flat rafts kept afloat by using jablo, and kept in place at sea using a stone slab. Dozens of these floats are placed at intervals along a directional line usually three miles long. The lampuki, seeking shade and safety from preying fish like tuna, school beneath the rafts. Finally, the fishers catch all the fish by encircling the school with a large mesh net at each interval.

Catches have varied in weight and wholesale value over the last years. In 2014, Maltese fishers landed 344,900kg, going up to 507,856kg in 2015, but in 2016 falling to 464,231kg. That year, lampuki sold at an average €5.58 per kilo in wholesale and direct sales.

In a letter to the European Commission’s directorate-general for fisheries, the Nationalist candidate for MEP, Peter Agius, has demanded action against unruly Tunisians stealing the fish from Maltese kannizzatti.

He told the director for Mediterranean fisheries Valerie Laine that this was a “recurrent and systematic phenomenon… clearly the Tunisians’ fishing model includes the illegitimate exploitation of Maltese fishermen’s fishing devices,” he wrote.

Agius claims that that the situation is not being treated at a European level or at an international level of cooperation with Tunisia.

“What is the possibility that the European Commission helps Maltese fishermen? Does it have a way of addressing this situation through the General Fisheries Commission of the Mediterranean? And can this matter be raised as part of current negotiations with Tunisia on the DCFTA (deep and comprehensive free trade agreement)?”

Last August, some 130 Maltese vessels went out at sea for the lampuki season, each carrying an average of 150 floats. The fishing takes place between eight to 100 nautical miles outside Malta, along directional lines that are randomly allocated by the fishing authorities. But these fishers are no longer the sole utilisers of the traditional Maltese kannizzata system: now that the Italians, Spaniards, Greeks and Tunisian fishers are also fishing for lampuki, competition is being made worse by the confrontations between Maltese fishers in the south Mediterranean finding Tunisian boats harvesting their catch.