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MT 23 July 2017

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maltatoday, SUNDAY, 23 JULY 2017 4 News Before Paceville masterplan, Portelli applies for Mercury House high-rise JAMES DEBONO THE Gozitan developer Joe Portel- li has formally presented a new ap- plication to redevelop the Mercury House site in Paceville, despite the masterplan for the neighbourhood having gone back to the drawing board. Portelli's application to the Plan- ning Authority refers to his 40-sto- rey high-rise designed by Zaha Hadid Architects as an "iconic building" that would "induce an elegant and contemporary archi- tectural statement." He wants to now include residen- tial and tourist accommodation in the project, and amend the build- ing heights and footprint first ap- proved in 2011, which was limited to commercial and office develop- ment. The new application promises to increase public open space at ground level and restore the origi- nal Mercury House as per the orig- inal approved application. The application has been pre- sented before the finalisation of the new masterplan for Paceville, placed on the back-burner after popular disapproval from resi- dents. But the Labour Party has committed itself in its electoral manifesto to approve the mas- terplan in the present legislature, while ensuring that no private property is expropriated without consent and compensation. The Planning Authority is cur- rently conducting a social impact assessment on the masterplan. The Paceville masterplan effec- tively changed the goalposts for the new owners of Mercury House, who had been bound by a 2005 development brief when they pur- chased what was the GO telephone exchange from its former owners Penderville Ltd, for €25 million. The 2005 brief obliged the devel- oper to create a major public piaz- za around Mercury House, restore the Grade 2 scheduled telephone exchange building, remove any extensions to the rear of Mercury House, and prohibited any hotels being approved on either the Mer- cury or Pender sites. Most importantly, the brief made it clear that the Mercury site could not benefit from the floor area ratio policy, which allows taller buildings when more open space is created. The highest building on the site was set at 15 floors. The design of the whole area had to highlight Mercury House as the focal point, and "ensure good views of its attractive front elevation". In contrast, the masterplan for Paceville wants to create a long view to the listed Spinola Entrench- ment Archway at the entrance of the Dragonara peninsula. No simi- lar treatment has been granted to the listed Mercury House, which was set to host the highest sky- scraper, of around 35 floors, seeing its total floor space area increase from just 11,081 square metres to 87,000 sq.m. The masterplan was drafted by Mott MacDonald, a consultancy firm that the new Mercury House owner, Joseph Portelli, actually en- gaged for his own project months before the start of the masterplan. A design for the building has already been prepared by Zaha Hadid Architects. The project was to include a boutique hotel incor- porating the scheduled historic building, which will be flanked by two towers – one of 40-storeys and another of 25-storeys – housing commercial and residential units. Over 80 per cent of the apart- ments in the proposed Mercury House development in Paceville have already been snapped up, ac- cording to the leading agent for the project, Re/Max in comments to the Times of Malta published in March. But it was only on 7 July that the planning application was presented. jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt MATTHEW VELLA ALMOST 700 tonnes of fish have gone unreported from Malta's statistical system every year for the past decade, a new study by the Sea Around Us reveals. The Sea Around Us is a re- search initiative at the University of British Columbia and the Uni- versity of Western Australia, that assesses the impact of fisheries on the marine ecosystems of the world. As industrial fleets expand their activities in Malta's Exclu- sive Fishing Zone, the amount of discards that they generate also grows. In recent times, fish- ers have been dumping approxi- mately 380 tonnes of fish every year, which is the equivalent to the amount of seafood need- ed to feed 19,000 people for a 12-month period. Most of these fish are caught unintentionally by trawlers and thrown back into the ocean be- cause they are undersized or damaged. "Discards are playing an increasing role in the unre- ported catches in the last few years, mainly due to the rapid growth in the trawl fishery," says Myriam Khalfallah, lead author of the study published this week in Mediterranean Marine Sci- ence. The unreported catches grew during the late 1980s and 1990s, and were more or less equivalent to half the landings reported by the national Maltese authorities in the last decades. Khalfallah, a Ph.D. candidate with the Sea Around Us, says that authorities need to start moni- toring discards in order to keep track of the health of Malta's fish stocks and guarantee the food security of its people. "Doing so would make the country a leader in the region when it comes to fisheries management," she said. "Accomplishing such a goal would require officials to start counting 'subsistence-type' catches as well," the researcher said. According to Khalfallah, fish caught by commercial fishers for their personal and crew or fam- ily consumption are also miss- ing from government reports and their numbers add up to 285 tonnes per year in recent years. While most of the commercial marine fisheries catch is chan- nelled through the Valletta fish market, since the 1950s the Mal- tese authorities have been adding 25% of the monthly catch esti- mate from the market to account for any landings that bypass the main market, for example direct sales to hotels and consumers. Recreational catches are also nowhere to be found despite the fact that, only in 2014, recrea- tional vessels represented around 65 per cent of the total Maltese fishing fleet. "People fishing for fun only catch a total average of 24 tonnes per year and they retain most of their catch. However, their num- bers continue to climb thanks to a growing tourism industry and improved economic conditions in the country. It is important to keep a record of what they are doing," Khalfallah says. Overall, Maltese catches be- tween 1950 and 2014 were 1.3 times higher than reported. "Malta is making good efforts to estimate unreported com- mercial landings, but the recrea- tional and subsistence fisheries together with discards need to be monitored to get a better idea of what is really being killed and withdrawn from the ocean," the scientist concludes. The study "Reconstruction of Marine Fisheries Catches for the Republic of Malta (1950-2014)" uses the Sea Around Us' catch reconstruction method to incor- porate unreported catches and complement both national sta- tistics and fishery data assembled by the Food and Agriculture Or- ganization of the United Nations. The aim is to provide compre- hensive estimates of how much fish is really caught by the indus- trial and small-scale sectors and under what circumstances. 700 tonnes of fish lost in discard every year Overall, Maltese catches between 1950 and 2014 were 1.3 times higher than reported Discards are playing an increasing role in the unreported catches in the last few years, mainly due to the rapid growth in the trawl fishery

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