A Maltese newspaper has raised questions about Japan's alleged import of 12 million kg of tuna from the country when experts say it could only produce half the amount. 

 

The Fisheries Department this week issued a detailed breakdown of its bluefin tuna exports to Japan between 2007 and 2008, after MaltaToday Midweek pinpointed a discrepancy of over 6 million kg between international trade report figures.

 

MaltaToday quoted from Japan's official statistical declarations to ICCAT (the international tuna conservation authority, as well the Japanese government's own official import records, regarding bluefin tuna exported by Malta.

 

According to these sources, Malta would have exported to Japan nearly 12 million kg of bluefin tuna between June 2007 and March 2008.

 

However, an industry intelligence report suggested that the total stock of live bluefin tuna present in Malta's fish-farms at the time could not have been more than 4.8 million kg.

 

Japanese newspaper Asahi Shinbum calculated that Malta's total export capability in 2007, before taking into account losses and surplus, stood at approximately 6.8 million kg, far lower than the stated export figure.

 

Japan's Fisheries Division of the Ministry of Resources, Rural Affairs and Agriculture later clarified that the figure 12-million figure includes tuna products exported to Japan via transshipment through Maltese ports. 

 

The Fisheries Department explained that exports of farmed tuna in Malta stood at 6.7 million kg while tuna caught from the wild amounted to 142,700 kg. The remaining 5.1 million kg was accounted for by transhipments of tuna from Morocco, France, Italy, Libya and Turkey.

 

However, the paper contended that these details were never recoreded in statistical declarations filed with local authorities.

 

It was also not clear whether the re-exported tuna were from finished in Maltese farms but imported from other countries or transshipped from other countries as the end product.

 

The newspaper contends that the figures supplied by Japanese authorities were at best vague.

 

The apparent discrepancy has caught the attention of the European Commission and conservancy group Greenpeace. Both are closely monitoring the situation.

 

A Greenpeace spokesman said the group is waiting for Japanese authorities to provide an accurate breakdown of the origins of its imports, including how much of the imports were farmed or wild fishes.

 

Greenpeace has been campaigning to protect the bluefin tuna from overfishing, as the species is believed to be heading towards a rapid extinction if the current fishing trends are not reversed.