THE environmental organisation, Oceana presented a report yesterday, Oct 28th, in Rome on the use of illegal driftnets in the Mediterranean Sea by countries including Italy, Morocco, Turkey and Algeria.
Driftnets have been banned since 2002 by the European Union, and since 2003 in the entire Mediterranean by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).
The case of the European Union is the most flagrant. As stated in the Oceana report, hundreds of millions of Euros were used to reconvert large fleets from several Member States that hunted down species such as swordfish and albacore. In Italy, more than 120 million Euros of European Community and Italian funds were invested between 1997 and 2002 to reconvert or dismantle a fleet of some 700 vessels.