Will people please stop protecting me? This includes EU Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg and apparently our government, who seem dead keen to 'defend Malta's interest' by opposing an EU ban on tuna fishing (and, by implication, ranching).

The Labour Party 'urged Malta to resist the ban ... (and) act in the same way as Spain' (The Times, September 10). Our politicians, it seems, only agree on matters of public detriment.

I suspect I'm not alone in my irritation. 'Malta's interest' would imply a collective, popular love of tuna fishing and ranching, presumably based on a bounty from which most Maltese benefit. Reality is quite the opposite.

I have yet to meet someone who is remotely interested in the sea (as bather, diver, or so on - the majority of the Maltese population, as it happens) who does not profoundly hate the tuna pens and what they're doing to our most precious natural resource.

For my part I've refused to touch fresh tuna, much as I used to enjoy it, for a couple of years now. I'm neither Green nor morally upright, but I've seen for myself what tuna ranching does to the marine environment.

Delimara, for example, used to be a favourite bathing spot. The combination of natural rock formations, open horizons, and clean sea was to die for. Except it was the first to expire, killed off by the dreaded tuna ranching operations just offshore.

The horizon (much nearer, actually) now crawls with pens and an assortment of ships and boats that service them. The sea has become almost unswimmable and the air heavy with a sickly smell of fish oil.

What's more, it's getting worse. Up until two or so years ago, northerly winds used to bring some relief. Now, it seems no current is strong enough to rid the place of smells and the disgusting brown stuff that floats out of the pens and pollutes the coast for miles. Malta's interest my mule.

But wait, how about the '€100 million' the industry claims to 'inject' annually in our economy? Nonsense. It's a bit like awarding myself a hefty pay rise to raise the average national salary.

Which it would, of course, but in a rather lopsided way shall we say. Truth is that most of this money (the figure is in any case questionable) is going to line the pockets of a wealthy few. I really have no problem with people getting rich, super rich if they must, but not at the expense of the only thing that makes our summers bearable. Malta's interest my donkey.

There are, of course, other serious problems with the current state of the art. The one that has prompted the EU to take this initiative is over-exploitation of the species. Greenpeace and other groups argue that it is on the brink of extinction. Even if we don't go that far (and I'm not saying we shouldn't - they may well be right on this one), fact is that all respectable conservation groups agree that something has to be done and fast. The industry itself counters the consensus with another weary piece of hogwash. It goes along the lines of 'it's not in our long-term interest to kill tuna off, because we're the ones making money from it'. Call me a sceptic but I find this very, very hard to buy.

History shows us that self-regulation in the use of wild resources is mostly a fable. Most people really do see the logic of taking from nature at a rate that is sustainable in the long term, but few if any convert that to any sort of meaningful practice. They will take and take until there's none left.

This has nothing to do with 'modernity' or 'industrialisation' (which is why I have no time for terms like 'traditional methods' and such). There is some excellent scientific work, for example, that shows how the islands of Oceania in the tropical Pacific lost most of their bird species when Polynesians arrived there more than 1,000 years ago.

On a smaller and more familiar scale, most Maltese spear-fishers will complain about the dearth of octopus, say, but will then cheerily proceed to spend hours combing the shore catching as many octopus as they can. If their freezer can't take it, too bad.

The answer to this gormlessness is politics. The regulation of the use of wild resources only works when people collectively decide that the logic of wise use is worth putting into practice. In this case it has to be collective. Left to individuals, the attitude that's likely to prevail is, 'if I don't get it someone else will'. The only way to stop this cleverness from taking over is sanction - usually legal but at times ritual, for example.

Having established that politics is the answer, we now need to ask a further question: What sort of politics best fits the case in question?

Certainly not a narrow-minded 'national interest' type. For the simple reason that tuna fishing and consumption no longer work along those lines. There is barely a book published on globalisation that doesn't use the tuna trade as a key example.

The details are irrelevant here, but we know that most of the quality blue-finned tuna caught and ranched worldwide is destined for the Japanese sashimi market - which itself is by no means limited to Japan, even if that country remains a major consumer.

The upshot is that political action aimed at preservation of this type of resource ought to be based on the premise of a global collectivity, rather than a crowd of inward-looking national ones. There may be occasions when politicians have to defend the national interest, but this is not one of them.

In 1996, a single 238kg tuna fetched €62,000 at a Tokyo auction house. How much of it would have gone towards our 'national interest' is not known, but my guess is that it wouldn't have been enough to justify the rape of our seas and its 'protection' by a bunch of rapists in shining armour.

mafalzon@hotmail.com